"When you come into a Byzantine church, you should be transcended to the divine," said the Rev. Frank Firko.

That transcendence takes place through icons, a kind of painting that represents scenes and people from the Bible and important people in church history.

But people who came into St. Michael's Byzantine Catholic Church, Hermitage, where Rev. Firko is pastor, have seen only bare walls since the church was built in 1973, a sign of the church's humble origins as a worship place for immigrants with little money.

When the church, which was located in Farrell from 1905 to 1973, decided it was time to follow Pope John Paul II's decree that eastern churches get back to their spiritual foundations, it initiated a project to adorn the church with icons, filling those bare walls with visions of heaven.

Rev. Firko hired a tiny, 74-year-old woman to transform the church.

Mila Mina, a native of Brno in the present-day Czech Republic and a resident of San Diego, is self-deprecating of her talents, but comes highly recommended. Rev. Firko noted she has painted more than 50 United States churches, and churches in the Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

"She's done many of our parishes and the priests are very happy with her work," Rev. Firko said.

"I never learned," Ms. Mina said from atop a scaffolding as she painted angels. "That's why it looks like that. I muddle through."

Born into an artistic family, Ms. Mina said she has always painted.

"I was trained, more or less, in all styles, up to Picasso and Surrealism," said Ms. Mina, who has made regular visits to St. Michael's since April and is about two months away from being done.

She turned her attention to iconography in 1959. The priest of her Van Nuys, Calif., church decided the congregation had outgrown his two-car garage and started collecting to build a church.

With four kids and a husband in college, Ms. Mina had nothing to offer financially. But the priest saw her painting supplies and recruited her to adorn the church.

Through subsequent commissions and guidance from priests, she came to be able to paint icons, which she differentiated from "holy pictures."

Although iconographers are allowed to show individual styles in their work -- Ms. Mina said her icons reflect the Gothic architecture that is prevalent in the Czech Republic -- there are standards that must be followed.

"The difference between normal art and iconography is iconography is a kind of cartoons, which are strictly symbolic," said Ms. Mina, who listens to eastern liturgical choral music while she paints.

Colors carry meaning, such as red representing Christ's blood and green, life. Most icons look back at the viewer, she said.

"When I started the icons, I had to forget the third dimension," said Ms. Mina, whose son is a priest at Ascension Church, Clairton. "There is no shadow."

The word icon is Greek for sacred image, although it often is used in a secular context these days, Rev. Firko said.

Icons "help us experience divine things, the divine nature of God in our lives so we can go out in the world and bear witness to the gospel," he said.

Icons show "prefigurations," events that foreshadowed more significant ones.

An image of Christ giving communion to the apostles, "is a prefiguration of what it will be like in Heaven," Rev. Firko said.

Abraham sacrificing his son foretells Jesus sacrificing himself.

Scenes of prophets Jacob, Moses, David and Ezekiel are prefigurations of Mary. The ladder of Jacob's vision predicts Christ as both man and son of God through Mary, and the sealed gate Ezekiel saw foreshadowed Mary retaining her virginity, Rev. Firko said.

The church sanctuary also is adorned with icons of two eastern European bishops martyred by the Soviets. Both were beatified last year by the pope, bringing them one step away from sainthood.

All the elements of an icon are taken from Bible stories and prayers.

"If you can recite the prayers, you can tell the icons very easily," Ms. Mina said, leafing through a prayer book with fingers splattered with blue and white paint. "The icon is teaching us the catechism."

Historically, icons have made the faith accessible to illiterate people, and in cultures before there was written language.

Illiterate people often have "profound understanding of the faith" because of what they've seen in the icons, said Rev. Firko, a priest at the church since 1977 and pastor since 1995.

Jesus provided the theological basis for icons, but they often are confused with idols. Icons are prototypes, Rev. Firko said. You don't worship the icon, you worship the heavenly event it portrays, connecting the earthbound person with heaven.

Although Ms. Mina doesn't profess to be anything special, Rev. Firko said iconographers are revered.

"An iconographer is more than just a painter," he said. "It's a painter who prays, fasts and meditates to make themselves the article for the painting."

Parishioners, especially those who frequent the 8 a.m. daily liturgy, have been able to closely follow Ms. Mina's work.

"There is awe of how people with such talent can bring about such beauty," Rev. Firko said.

Most of Ms. Mina's work is in the sanctuary, where the priest celebrates worship services, but she also is painting a banquet cloth around the base of the church, symbolic of Jesus inviting people to the banquet of faith.

Someday, the church could choose to fill the rest of its bare space with icons.

"This will initiate the cause," Rev. Firko said. "When you initiate any cause, you have to absorb it slowly so the people will not be overwhelmed."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at

jpinchot@sharon-herald.com