By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
About 25 women from several Dowagiac churches gathered as an ecumenical community Friday afternoon at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 306 Courtland St., for the 179-nation World Day of Prayer.
Women of Poland wrote this year's service around the theme "Let our Light Shine."
Sonja Smith, attending St. Paul's since 1997, led the March 4 service and explained the 1958 design of the sanctuary in Dowagiac's oldest public building.
St. Paul's had a close relationship with St. Gregory's Abby of Three Rivers.
A brother at St. Gregory's, Father Francis Bacon, had an art background.
He assisted St. Paul's with its new design 47 years ago and personally created a mosaic at the rear of the sanctuary.
Based on a Byzantine church in Ravenna, Italy, that's why St. Paul's has black-and-white tiles and 10-foot by five-foot mosaics Fr. Bacon designed that were made by an artisan in Detroit.
Also, she pointed out, St. Paul and Mary avert their eyes.
Only Jesus looks out at the congregation.
Dowagiac's World Day of Prayer observance began with service leaders breaking a loaf of bread, placing pieces into baskets and sprinkling them with salt, then sharing them with the gathering.
In Poland, bread and salt have been associated with one another for ages - in the daily bread, the daily food and the Bread of Life - spiritual food.
Thus, bread is at the same time something ordinary and something wonderful and sacred.
Poland, a European country, is located between the Baltic Sea and the Tatra Mountains and has been Christian for more than a thousand years.
Mieszko I united the Slavic tribes in 966 and, with his subjects, was converted to Christianity by Saints Cyril and Methodius.
Much upheaval has characterized this land whose borders have changed many times due to invasions from all sides. Political and religious rights have been at the root of many difficulties in central Europe.
More recently, the Polish people's stand for freedom against their oppressive government inspired the entire world.
Ninety-five percent of Poland's population belong to the Roman Catholic Church, which played a key role in preserving Polish traditions and independence during partitioning (1772-1918) and under communism (1945-1989).
The election of Polish Pope John Paul I impacted socio-political changes in the Eighties.
As St. Matthew says in Bible text chosen for this service by the women of Poland, be "the light of the world," be "the salt of the earth."