LOURDES, France—“I must be the only New York City Jew for hundreds of miles,” I think as I walk down the street towards the famous Grotto, one of the world’s most visited Catholic pilgrimage sites, where in the mid-19th century St. Bernadette is said to have had a vision of the Virgin. After a restless overnight train, I am armed with my notebook and my Let’s Go press pass, ready to be fascinated, repelled and intrigued. I’m not ready to cry.

But an hour later, I’m sitting on the pavement, and I’ve seen a parade of sick, disabled, and blind young and old, being wheeled or prodded towards the grotto to receive their blessing. Hearing poignant organ music in the background and operating on little sleep, I have been robbed of self-control; my sobs come in big hiccuping gulps that I hide as best I can beneath my sunglasses.

The Catholics around me, afflicted by disease and sadness, have faces full of hope. While they clutch the wheelchairs of elderly, infirm parents in one hand and their rosaries in the other, they are thinking only of the good that religion might do. Only I am moved to cry—the agnostic backpacker who thinks of French Catholicism as a long tradition of killing Huguenots, persecuting Jews and building gorgeous cathedrals on the backs of peasants.

In order to rescue myself from the terror of pure feeling, I decide to analyze my tears. My pragmatic, journalist side is upset and angered by the futility of some of these pilgrimages, particularly those of the parents who have brought mentally disabled children here. Holy water doesn’t stop cancer, chemotherapy does; and a three-dollar bar of soap in the shape of the Virgin Mary won’t do much in the way of healing birth defects. But my emotional, aesthetic side is completely struck by the wonder of the scene: by the music echoing from the giant underground basilica, by the way people’s hands lovingly stroke the rocks of the grotto, by the sense of hope and faith in the humid July air. Theirs is a hope and faith that leaves me out of the loop, because there’s a part of me that would love—and I mean love—to be able to ditch my skepticism, get down on my knees and pray my heart out.

Damn it, religion is so beautiful. It’s not just the beauty in the stained glass of churches, the golden domes of mosques or the embroidered Torah scrolls. It’s in the faces of believers, illuminated by a mix of comfort and ecstasy. They are seeing into another world. They belong.

But religion is also terrible. These people whose faces I now watch in awe—I can’t help thinking that their ancestors confined mine to squalid, unlivable ghettos, or watched in silence as the cattle cars rolled out towards Auschwitz. And there’s no need to list the places in today’s world where people continue to kill in the name of God.

I’m in a tizzy about it all, so I’m happy to leave the site to meet Devin, an American I met on the night train, for dinner. Over a beer we joke about the nuns, the souvenir shops selling Jesus holograms, the obvious lack of nightlife. But despite our levity, we decide to go back and watch the candlelight procession in front of the church, where we hear “Hail Mary” in French, English, Spanish, Italian and German, and see pilgrims marching with candles held high.

Devin is part Catholic, and a little unsteadily, he whispers the prayer to himself. “We can leave if you want,” he says after a while. “No, no, we’ll leave whenever you want,” I say. So we stay around until the end. I’m just thankful he’s here—his presence prevents my being alone and vulnerable to another crying fit.

The next day, we take a bus to the Pyrenees—Devin to hike into Spain, me to research at the foot of glaciers. When I come back to Lourdes a few days later to finish my work, I have no thunderous emotional reaction. Lourdes is old hat, and I’m all business. I check off addresses and check out new restaurants for Let’s Go. Finally, I’m ready to leave.

At the train station I meet two American women from Boston who flew all the way here to pray for a sick relative. As the train lurches forward, one pulls out her rosary and whispers a prayer. I turn away, but am thankful that I’ve seen her, and that I’ve seen Lourdes. Even though I’ve had no vision, and drawn no conclusion, I know I haven’t passed through this holy ground unchanged.

Sarah M. Seltzer ’05, a Crimson editor, is an English concentrator in Lowell House. This coming semester she’s headed to Ireland in order to continue her in-depth study of religious conflict and beer.