The Promise of Oil for the People Around the Caspian Sea | The New Yorker

When I was a young boy, I visited the French town of Lourdes on a school trip. I was educated by the Christian Brothers, who believed that the grotto there was a miraculous site where, in 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a local girl. It had since become a popular pilgrimage site, as well as a place where the sick, the lame, and the unsound of mind were taken with the hope that they would be healed by the holy water that flowed from the spring. My abiding memory of Lourdes, though, is not the praying pilgrims in the thousands or the endless rosaries and outdoor masses but the sight of the small grotto itself, surrounded by discarded crutches and walking sticks. They lay in piles on the rocky ground around the spotlit statue of the Madonna, their abandonment serving as evidence of the miraculous properties of the holy spring water.