Mass in an Ice chapel

An estimated 2,000-plus students and other members of the Notre Dame community in South Bend, Indiana, gathered the night of Feb. 2 in subfreezing temperatures to celebrate a candlelit Mass at the site of St. Olaf Chapel, a student-constructed fleeting house of worship made from snow, ice and faith. Roughly 5 feet wide and 15 feet long with 6-foot ceilings, an apse, stained-glass windows and a spire peaking at 20 feet, St. Olaf Chapel was born from the winter daydreaming of two seniors and residence assistants at Coyle Hall. Inspired by an igloo another Notre Dame student had built, they sought to construct their own monument on campus. Construction began the afternoon of Jan. 27, near the end of a month that saw more than 38 inches of snowfall in South Bend, the city's eighth-snowiest January on record. They modeled their chapel loosely off the University of Notre Dame's Basilica of the Sacred Heart and even Paris' Sainte-Chapelle. While the campus' famed golden-domed basilica took more than 20 years to fully complete, the ice chapel replica took about six days. The time in the cold, often alone, lent ample time to think. One topic: what to call their snow creation.

They landed on the name St. Olaf — after the 11th-century Norwegian king and martyr, not the snowman from the Disney movie "Frozen." Eventually, they decided to hold a Mass at the chapel and gave themselves a deadline of Feb. 2, the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. The assembly fell silent as the choir of 50 students began singing "In the Bleak Midwinter." Braving temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, the students prayed and even kneeled in the snow around St. Olaf. After the homily, they sang, with arms locked together, the alma mater "Notre Dame, Our Mother." One of the petitions prayed for those who suffer in the cold. Communion alone took a half hour and the priests ran out of consecrated hosts. Looking ahead, the Notre Dame students don't have any future plans for St. Olaf Chapel. Temperatures were expected to rise above freezing by Friday. The general consensus was "We'll let it melt. We'll let it go on. It was all for the glory of God, and it'll just be a good memory soon.”