Courtesy photo Fr. Ben Hasse gives Communion during last year’s Ice Mass

HOUGHTON — Building a chapel out of ice and snow was just a ‘fun idea’ until a small group of students at St. Albert the Great University Parish decided to give it a go in 2016. The students got to work, shoveling, forming, and carving the first Ice Chapel. They were soon surprised how quickly the word spread and how excited people were to come to such an event. It became a yearly tradition, dubbed, “The Ice Mass at the Ice Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows,” or simply, “The Ice Mass.”

This year’s Ice Mass will be held at St. Albert the Great University Parish (St. Al’s), 411 MacInnes Drive, in Houghton during Michigan Tech’s Winter Carnival. There are three Masses: 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 9, as well as at 10 a.m. EST on Saturday, Feb. 10. The first Mass, 5:30 pm EST on Friday Feb. 9 will be live-streamed on Facebook (and embedded on the website, mtucatholic.org/icemass).

The chapel is built each year by college students and community members in the Keweenaw peninsula town of Houghton, Michigan, USA. A mountain of snow; plywood forms held together with 2×4’s; and a workforce of students, shoveling, bucketing, and stomping snow, brings the chapel to life. Each year more students get involved in the build, and offer new creative dimensions. The chapel’s centerpiece, the altar, is built using thick slabs of ice, hand cut from Lake Superior (it’s quite an ordeal to get it in place). Built into the walls, one can find a raised pulpit, a Marian grotto, a hand-carved confessional, corridors along the sides, and beautiful ‘stained ice’ windows.

With each new year, the chapel is built more elaborately. Snow dependent, This year’s chapel will likely include:

– An ice altar – built of multiple slabs of ice, weighing hundreds of pounds, pulled up by hand from Lake Superior – the largest freshwater lake in the world.

– Stained ice windows – created via dyed ice mosaics and by hand-painting panels of ice (all done by the students)

– A Confessional carved from snow (that gets used!)

– Hand-carved side aisles- a new feature added in 2022

– An elevated pulpit tower

– Marian grotto

– A bell tower

The priests at St. Al’s will celebrate three planned Ice Masses in the Our Lady of the Snows Ice Chapel, the first of which is live-streamed on Facebook: Feb 10 at 5:30 p.m. EST. You may visit mtucatholic.org/icemass to register for the link.

Throughout the building process, students grow together in friendship. When asked how much it costs to build an Ice Chapel, Father Ben Hasse simply responds “about a thousand dollars worth of pizza,” which fuels the student labor. St. Al’s parish is overjoyed each year to shovel together a creation that glorifies God and brings the community together through the Mass.