Abba Macarius said to Abba Zacharias, “Tell me, what is the work of a monk?” He said to him, “Are you asking me, Father?” Abba Macarius said, “I am fully assured about you, my child Zacharias. There is someone who keeps urging me to ask you.” Zacharias said to him, “In my judgment, Father, the one who forces himself in everything—he is the monk.”
Abba Moses once went to draw water and found Abba Zacharias praying at the well, with the Spirit of God resting above him.
Abba Moses once said to brother Zacharias, “Tell me what I should do.” When Zacharias heard this, he threw himself on the ground at Moses’s feet and said, “Are you asking me, Father?” The elder said to him, “Believe me, my child Zacharias: I saw the Holy Spirit descending upon you, and since then I have been compelled to ask you.” Then Zacharias took the hood from his head, placed it under his feet, and trampled it. He said, “Unless a person is crushed like this, he cannot be a monk.”
Once, while Abba Zacharias was sitting in Scetis, a contemplation came to him. He rose and told his father, Carion. The elder was experienced in ascetic practice but was not discerning in such matters. He rose and beat Zacharias, saying that it came from demons. But the thought remained. Zacharias rose and went by night to Abba Poemen. He told him what had happened and how his insides were burning. Seeing that it was from God, the elder said to him, “Go to such-and-such an elder, and whatever he tells you, do it.” Zacharias went to that elder. Before Zacharias could ask him anything, the elder spoke first, told him everything, and said that the contemplation was from God. “But go,” he said, “and submit to your father.”
Abba Poemen said that Abba Moses asked Abba Zacharias, when Zacharias was about to die, “What do you see?” He said to him, “Is it not better to be silent, Father?” Moses said, “Yes, my child. Be silent.” At the hour of his death, Abba Isidore, who was sitting there, looked up toward heaven and said, “Rejoice, my child Zacharias, because the gates of the kingdom of heaven have been opened to you.”