An Egyptian desert ascetic and recluse remembered for his deep concern for the poor and homeless, on whose account he was given a name marking his care for the outcast. OCA notes he has at times been erroneously identified with Saint Zachariah the Monk.
Our Venerable Father Zachariah the Recluse of Egypt
Zachariah the Recluse was an Egyptian desert ascetic remembered chiefly for his concern for the poor and homeless. According to the synaxarion, it was on account of this care for the destitute that he came to be known by a name marking him out as a friend to the outcast.
Beyond this defining trait the surviving record of his life is brief. He is commemorated as a recluse of Egypt, that is, a hermit who withdrew from the world for a life of solitude and prayer, and is numbered among the monastic fathers of the Egyptian desert.
In the printed Menaion he is styled "our Monastic Father Zachariah," and on this account he has at times been identified erroneously with another saint, Zachariah the Monk. The synaxarion notes this conflation expressly, since the name Zacharias is borne by several distinct saints.
His commemoration is kept on March 24.
An Egyptian recluse of this name is associated by tradition with the desert fathers whose sayings were gathered in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the collection of stories and counsels of the early Christian hermits of Egypt, and especially of the region of Scetis, in the fourth and fifth centuries. The precise link between the saint commemorated on March 24 and the figure of that name in the Sayings is traditional rather than firmly established, and the fuller details of his life have not survived.