One of South Bend’s snowiest winters on record was the perfect storm for seniors Wesley Buonerba and Martin Soros to construct a chapel out of ice and snow. On the feast of Candlemas, an estimated 2,000 students attended a snowy Mass in sub-20 degree weather at the frozen chapel.
Buonerba and Soros are senior Resident Assistants (RAs) in Coyle Community, temporarily located this year in Zahm Hall. Buonerba studies architecture and theology and Soros studies civil engineering; theology; and education, schooling, and society. Buonerba is also a sacristan in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
The Coyle RAs’ inspiration came from their friend Liam Devine, a Coyle sophomore who had built an igloo on North Quad. Buonerba said, “Naturally, both of our minds first went to a chapel.” Father Gregory Haake, C.S.C., Coyle’s priest in residence and the presider of the outdoor Mass, provided a testament to the boys’ inventive spirit saying, “Wesley and Martin are often up to some sort of creative project. … I’m sure they saw the igloo that Liam Devine was building and decided that the neighborhood needed a church.”
Buonerba and Soros began with a rough sketch of a Gothic style chapel. On Tuesday, January 26 they laid out the first blocks, starting with seven-foot Gothic arches and then filling the space between each arch with ice and snow.
The pair estimate they spent between 60 to 70 hours over the course of the next six days building the chapel. Though a group of friends came in and out to help, the core team consisted of just the two RAs. Buonerba told the Rover, “We were out here every night, working until our gloves froze, then going inside, going to class, getting right back out here, back to it.”
Buonerba said the design utilized basic architecture structures he learned in classes. “All it is, is a simple masonry arch, using Gothic techniques to vault it, and make the little walls.”
Construction began by creating bricks out of compacted snow and water that was mixed in recycling bins the pair had collected from their dorm. Using a salvaged car hood from a dorm fundraising event, positioned and held vertically by ladders from dorm bunk beds, they stacked bricks on the top and sides to form the arches.
Once the walls and roof were completed, Buonerba and Soros began working on the chapel’s key features. Ice windows were made by filling large storage container lids with water from the Zahm showers, then letting the water freeze overnight. They then stained the windows with food dye to imitate stained glass. Soros crafted a crucifix to place inside the chapel by melding icicles together to form the cross beams; he then formed Christ’s corpus out of snow before refining it with a chisel.
According to Soros, one of the most joyful moments was seeing the construction of the chapel’s most striking feature, the ice spire on the roof. Soros told the Rover, “The moment that Wes got up there and started assembling it and putting it all together, people were walking by and they were amazed. It was really cool to just see him up there. He was just standing on some of the arches, and structurally it was perfectly sound, which brought us a lot of joy.”
The pair named the chapel, “St. Olaf Chapel,” after the canonized 11th century king of Norway. The chapel is estimated to be 15 feet long, with the spire reaching nearly 20 feet tall. The inside is approximately seven feet tall by five feet wide.
But Buonerba and Soros’ dream was more than the construction of the ice chapel: They wanted to use their creation to bring together the Notre Dame Community for an outdoor Mass. Soros told the Rover, “Even when there was just one arch, we knew there would be a Mass here.”
With knowledge of warmer weather in the coming weeks, they set a deadline for Mass on Monday, February 2, the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, also known as Candlemas.
The pair reached out to Father Peter McCormick, C.S.C., Assistant Vice President of Campus Ministry and a favorite of the Notre Dame student body, to see if he would be interested in preaching for the Mass.
Buonerba and Soros knew that if Fr. McCormick “was at least preaching, or if people knew that he would be there, that it would bring a large group of people.” They recruited a few Old College seminarians to help with logistics, and that Saturday began advertising Mass through posts on social media and on a whiteboard outside their chapel. According to Soros, “Word spread fast.”
Fr. McCormick told The Observer that the university checked with diocesan regulations about the celebration of outdoor Mass: “We checked with the diocesan regulations to make sure everything was appropriate and in keeping with Church guidelines, and there were no issues.”
That Monday at 10 p.m., an estimated 2,000 students arrived in front of St. Olaf Chapel for the candlelit Mass. They watched in awe as a procession, complete with ice candlesticks and an ice crucifix, processed through the snow to the altar, which was also made of ice.
The chapel was illuminated by an array of candles described by Fr. Haake as “a light to reveal Him to all nations.” A volunteer choir, conducted by senior Kaleb Reil, formed to provide music for the Mass. Hymns included “In the Bleak Midwinter,” the Alma Mater, and “O God Beyond All Praising.”
The entire congregation knelt on the snow-covered ground for the consecration of the Holy Eucharist. During the distribution of Holy Communion, the priests eventually ran out of consecrated hosts, even after splitting them into quarters. It was announced at the end of Mass that the priests had brought 1,600 hosts, though attendance likely numbered over 2,000, since an additional 500 hosts were brought from the Saint Albert the Great Chapel in Zahm Hall.
Fr. Haake recognized the unexpected attendance as “a lesson for all of us: people are attracted to beauty. Wesley and Martin gave it to them, and when they came, they found Jesus, too. It was a great moment of evangelization,” he told the Rover.
“Several factors came together that made this so moving: the absolute beauty of the structure, the fact that it was Candlemas and that candles were a perfect complement to the chapel’s beauty, the cold and the quiet, and the unexpected fervor and enthusiasm around it that came from the students,” he concluded.
Josh Gatesman is a freshman studying strategic management. You can reach him at your local ski hill, or by emailing jgatesman@nd.edu.