Sculpting An Ice Chapel In Frigid Northern Michigan Kindles Faith And Community

Fr. Ben Hasse, who directs student ministries at Michigan Technological University, said that the annual building of an ice chapel builds faith and community in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula.

In an interview, Hasse said students at the institution on the shore of Lake Superior are anxious each year to sculpt snow and ice into a worship space. The university is at least an eight-hour drive from Detroit, which means students are likely to remain there on the weekends to look for something to do. Winter brings blizzards, frigid temperatures, and icy roads.

The Winter Carnival in Houghton, Michigan, dates back more than 100 years and is deeply connected to the university and the broader community. Since then, student fraternities and other groups have produced ice and snow sculpture for the event, which lasts a month. There has long been a contest to choose the best snow sculpture among numerous entries. Catholic students also contribute a statue, and some of them spent most of the night February 5-6 completing a sculpture representing Notre Dame de Paris. Hasse said Catholic students have won the competition ten times over the last eleven years.

Apart from sculptures, over the last nine years, students have built an ice chapel dubbed Our Lady of the Snows. The students of St. Albert the Great University Parish completed this year’s Ice Chapel in time for an “Ice Mass” to be celebrated early evening Feb. 7. Interest has grown in recent years, Hasse said, and prompted him to offer two more such masses overnight. Now complete, Our Lady of the Snows accommodates 500 people. Candles light the altar and walls made of compacted snow, while students have used panes of ice colored to resemble stained glass windows.

Hasse said that a student’s mother approached him with the idea of an ice chapel, having seen them in Eastern Europe. In 2016, word spread about the plans, which students discussed at weekly gatherings Hasse organized at St. Albert. When a student told him that even non-Catholic students asked to attend the Ice Mass, Hasse reflected: “When she told me this, I could see that this had traction that we hadn’t imagined. We had 140 people show up that year. And we hit 800 two years ago. We stumbled into this but it caught people’s imagination.”

Since then, attendance has grown. Local and international media have covered the event every year. Students take about one month to build the chapel by compacting snow into plywood forms, then carving blocks into walls, an altar made of an ice slab, and a confessional. It even features a grotto of the Virgin Mary and niches for candles. It measures at least 35 by 60 feet.

Building the ice chapel,Hasse said, allows him and associate pastor Fr. Romeo Capella to become acquainted with students on a personal level. “This is an example of evangelical enculturation,” he said. Like the FOCUS apostolate on campus, Hasse said he sees success with a strategy called ‘Win. Build. Send’ to form discipleship. This recognizes that there are stages in helping the unchurched or lapsed Catholics to encounter Jesus Christ and his Church. “The first stage is to win the opportunity to build a relationship and to have something to say about the Faith that would interest people,” he said. Unfortunately, many Catholic parishes do not take that initial step, he said..

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“This is a lot easier to do on a college campus, which is why college campuses have vibrant growth in the U.S. There are many campuses that have doubled their student involvement in the last twenty years, and FOCUS and similar organizations have been a huge part of that,” Hesse affirmed. Other parishes, he said, might have success in evangelizing by offering activities to which parishioners can invite friends. He said activities need not be specifically religious. “We do a lot of hiking, and in the spring I lead a hike with students.” Hasse was raised in the Upper Peninsula, and enjoys the outdoors. 

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula affords plenty of other outdoor activities, such as skiing, snowshoeing, and canoeing. “We do a lot of meals, a lot of bonfires. While it's not as though we are not spending time at Mass, Adoration, catechesis, and discipleship, it’s those ‘Win’ events that are the start of that process. If you don’t have people stepping into it, then you don’t have people going further,” he said.

The Ice Chapel and student outreach has borne fruit, Hasse said. Since 2018, fourteen men from the university have entered seminary formation, dozens of marriages, and numerous lay missionaries, he said, adding that Mass attendance has doubled in ten years. “Two of the guys who have spent days working on the Ice Chapel are not Catholic, but are preparing to enter the Church,” he said. Building the Ice Chapel is like an Amish barn-raising, he said, because it presents a challenge to build community together. 

Motorcycle-riding Fr. Capella said in an interview that St. Albert student parish offers retreats, mission trips, and opportunities for students to visit retirement homes. “Activities are a great way to get people to tag along and draw people in. It gives students something to do in addition to going to church. It brings a community aspect,” he said. At Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, a professor told him that the processions, rituals, and pilgrimages of the pre-Vatican II era drew people together. He said, “I agree that when we do something active we actually bring together the community in a positive way.”

Franciscan Sister and pastoral associate Jacqueline Spaniola said that when she came to the parish in 2017, a student told her the very first Mass he ever attended was at the Ice Chapel. He became a Catholic. On Feb. 5-6, students worked overnight carving their entry for the sculpture competition. “Father Ben and I made a meal and fed students working on sculptures even if they were not members of the parish,” she said. Sister Spaniola leads retreats and marriage preparation. “I was one of eleven children in my family, and I have seen good and bad marriages,” said the native of Flint, Michigan. The Franciscan has counseled young women to find good husbands while seeking a marriage vocation. “We hope that after they graduate that they will be active in their parishes,” she said. Sister Spaniola hopes that the student Knights of Columbus will revive a St. Vincent de Paul chapter in Houghton, too.

Former student Madi Hollman told EWTN in 2023, “There is nothing like spending time with students and parishioners chopping things, stomping snow, and painting stained glass windows. And for many people, this is their first Mass.”

Hasse said, “In this digitized culture, there are many people who are not doing great in this society we’ve built. Many of the most effective things we do are the simplest. I do a lot of cooking for the kids with ordinary ingredients. When some say, ‘This is the best food ever,’ I can tell them that’s because we use real butter instead of skim milk!” he said. In a region where cell-phone coverage is spotty, trips involving hiking or canoeing give them real encounters with nature and each other, preparing them to enter the church.”  

“We have students coming to us and knocking on our door and saying ‘Let me in,’” Hasse said while saying that students from Protestant and even atheist backgrounds are entering the Church. “We don’t think that we should be sitting here waiting for them, we should be out looking for them. Real stuff is attractive even though it is less and less available in a screen-based or skim milk-based world.”

Noting that Michigan Tech emphasizes hard sciences, Hasse said, “Engineering is pragmatic. Whatever you come up with is tested by reality, and that’s the Church’s view and its access to reality. Here there is less anti-faith content in the classroom. Professors are teaching statics and dynamics and students are just trying to survive, so there is less room for taking pot shots at Catholic students unlike other campuses. 

Hasse said finally that Michigan Tech has produced a Catholic legacy in alumnus and Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon, who was ordained in nearby Marquette, Michigan. In 2005, Sample returned to Marquette to serve as the youngest Catholic bishop in the U.S. at the time appointed by Pope Benedict XVI.