The Crib and the Christmas Tree in Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Church, University College Dublin

The pictures are a bit dark but I I felt like capturing the crib and the Christmas tree before they're taken down. (I hate it when Christmas decorations come down.)

I'm so lucky to have a church in my workplace. I'm even more lucky to be able to attend daily Mass there, during term. (And depending on my timetable, but my immediate superior kindly tries to contrive it so I can attend as often as possible-- on the condition that I pray for her, she says.)

I imagine these are the kind of privileges that Irish Catholics will soon have to do without, given the decline in vocations and the burgeoning hostility to the Faith. But who knows? I was very heartened by the reports that attendance at Christmas Mass seems to have increased this year. And it does seem to me as though congregation sizes are holding steady and maybe even rising in the short few years I've been attending Mass. It may be only a few years, but with the number of practicing Catholics supposedly in freefall, you'd expect the decline to be noticeable even in such a short span.