How the Core Imagery in Your Domestic Church Should Differ from a Parish Church

In the book The Little Oratory, my co-author Leila Lawler and I describe the traditional layout for images at the core of those in an icon corner or domestic church. The schema is as follows: Our Lady with Our Lord on the left, Christ on the Cross in the center, and the Risen Christ (a Mandylion, Christ in Majesty or Blessing Christ), on the right.

The one above uses traditional iconographical art. Although it is called an icon coner (or “image corner”), it doesn’t have to have icons. A standing crucifix and art in any of the Western traditional styles will work just as well. The logic is that we have a summary of salvation history symbolized here: the historical Christ on the left, with His Mother, from whom He took His humanity, then the passion and death of Our Lord, and then Christ in heaven. We live with him, die with him and are raised up with him by “putting on Christ” as St Paul refers to it in Galatians 3, 27, through baptism, confirmation, and communion.