Orthodoxy in Dialogue first published this tribute on January 29, 2018, the first anniversary of Matushka Juliana’s falling asleep in the Lord. May her memory be eternal.
Father Alexander and Matushka Juliana Schmemann Ordination day, 1946
Monday, January 29, is the first anniversary [NB: 2020 marks the third anniversary] of the passing of my mother, Juliana Schmemann, in the 94th year of her extraordinary life. To many in the Orthodox Church in America she is known best as the wife of Father Alexander Schmemann, the “L.” (for “Liana”) he so lovingly and so often refers to in his Journals. Many have also read her own remarkable story in two modest books she wrote, My Journey with Father Alexander and The Joy to Serve. On this anniversary, I would like to tell a little more about her life.
My parents were indeed a remarkable couple, drawn to each other from their first meeting, playing opposing roles in a household production of a musical staged in the Paris suburb of Clamart in the winter of 1940-41. He was 19 and she 17. Soon after they met again at the St. Sergius Institute, where my father was a seminarian. He told her he was studying for the priesthood—then slyly added, “but I do not intend to be a monk.”
It may seem self-evident that two such young Russians in Paris would find each other. Yet in that émigré world they came from very different circles. My father came from a family of high-ranking civil servants in St. Petersburg, and through his entire youth attended the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, the heart of the Russian emigration in Paris, where he served as altar boy, reader, and subdeacon, and was ordained priest. Read More
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