The great brass-bound oak door of the stone church stands partially open. Inside, a Christmas tree sits next to the pulpit, and hanging it around, 37 small coloured light bulbs. They are all Father McEvoy can afford this year. He’s cut the tree himself from a farm out in the country, and hauled it back on a small trailer behind his bicycle. Paper and tinsel saved from last year complete the decorations.

Alongside the tree is the Christmas crib. It’s a simple scene, made from twigs and straw and bits and pieces scrounged from the same farm, but lovingly put together. Mary and Joseph and the animals are pieces almost as old as Father McEvoy, and he doesn’t remember now where they come from. They have a dignity which reflects perfectly his joy in his handiwork, and the light from the tree gives a soft halo to the Holy Family.

Father McEvoy is standing in the shadows to one side of the door. He’s just returned from tea, and he wants to watch quietly awhile before the first folk arrive for Christmas Eve mass. Every year, as he meditates, he finds something new in what he sees.

He has been there only a few minutes, however, when a faint cry startles him. He doesn’t move, but listens carefully to see from where it’s come. There it is again, a whimper. Rather like a lost kitten. Inside the church.

Father McEvoy moves softly down the aisle, peering into the dimness each side. The cry again, clearer now. Somewhere near the tree. Father McEvoy moves closer, almost treading like a kitten himself.

He stops, at first in amazement, then in awe, as he reaches the Christmas crib. “Baby Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn,” says Luke’s story of the birth of the Christ-child. No crib for a bed. This Jesus should be a doll, lovingly brought out each year. Now he has 10 very alive fingers – sucking on half of them – and black eyes that dance in the round face when they see the priest.

“Hello, little one,” says Father McEvoy as he kneels beside the crib, his sense of awe deepening. “Where have you come from? Does our heavenly Father have a sense of humour I had not suspected?” (The baby clutches at the weather-beaten finger extended to it, sucks it, before its face begins to pucker with the realisation that no milk will be expressed by this dry teat.) “Or has another father reached the edge of despair?” he muses.

The old priest gently picks up the small form in the hope of calming the small storm building on its now-wrinkled face. He pauses, half-kneeling, as a fleeting fire-flicker of light catches the corner of his eye, then continues rising slowly. The movement is calming the child, and practised hands that have baptised a thousand more-reluctant infants cradle it carefully as he quietly talks to the absorbed face.

“Mary has travelled a long way, and she is exhausted. Or that’s how the story goes, little one,” says the priest. “She has a husband who is not the father of her coming child, and that at least is a comfort to her growing distress. Better, I think, than to have a father who is not a husband, nor any town to call home.