Posted on 01/26/2016 5:26:27 AM PST by marshmallow
You've probably heard the basic story by now: busses full of students heading home from the March for Life in Washington D.C. got stuck on a highway because of a blizzard, and while they were waiting they constructed an altar out of snow and held Mass on the side of the highway. Amazing!
ChurchPOP tracked down the priest who presided over this historic Mass, Fr. Patrick Behm, and interviewed him about his experience.
"It was incredible," Fr. Behm told ChurchPOP, "easily one of the highlights of my time as a priest."
Fr. Behm is the parochial vicar of All Saints' Parish in Le Mars, IA as well as parochial vicar of St. Patrick's Parish in Akron, IA, and the chaplain of Gehlen Catholic High School in Le Mars. He was chaperoning five students from the high school.
According to Fr. Behm, his group plus several other big groups from other schools got stuck near the mile marker 133 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. They were there for approximately 22 hours! The cause of the jam, Fr. Behm was told, was an accident involving two tractor-trailers that blocked all of the westbound lanes of traffic. In the time it took to clear this accident, the snow in turn rendered the road impassible and the vehicles immobile.
He couldn't claim credit for the idea of having Mass: "I was the principal celebrant of the liturgy," he said, "but credit for the idea, and credit for building the altar, and credit for going around to the various buses inviting people to join them belongs completely to the pilgrims from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, particularly Mr. Bill Dill, their youth minister."
It was those students from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who built the snow altar: "Those Minnesotans apparently know......
(Excerpt) Read more at churchpop.com ...
Well it is putting to work the old saying “When you have lemons, make lemonade”. God Bless them.
meh...a Novus Ordo service anywhere leaves me cold (especially in the snow, ha ha ha)...
all things considered, I’d be more inpressed with the TLM under those circumstances, requiring genuflections and kneeling in the snow to receive communion...
I still remember the out door masses in the woods when camping.
I remember mass in the army, when on field exercises. No matter how cold or tired we were, the mass was always very comforting.
This is a great story.
(But “busses” is not the plural of “bus”. The vehicles are “buses” and, while kisses are nice, snowstorms will not cause people to be stranded in busses for 22 hours.)
It’s still a Mass, isn’t it?
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