Faith in their journey

For my niece Rachel, it was that magical summer between high school graduation and the start of college. I hoped our trip would be the beginning of a new set of memories, the adult life realized.

I had already treated a niece and nephew to graduation celebrations in Hawaii, but the islands somehow seemed the wrong fit for Rachel, a devout Catholic and, at 18, already a cancer survivor. She is a remarkable young woman, my sister Tina’s middle child, who, even before her illness, had exhibited a graciousness that continued into adolescence, lifting her past the awkward it’s-all-about-me stage into an early serenity.

With her oval, Italianate face and deep-brown eyes, Rachel looks as if she walked out of a Renaissance painting, and her faith may be just as old-fashioned: She credits St. Bernadette of Lourdes with her recovery. Indeed, her diagnosis bordered on the miraculous, discovered as the doctor searched for the cause of an unrelated condition.

Lourdes had to be on our France itinerary, but I was also intent on visiting Rocamadour, the home of a rare and mystique-shrouded Black Virgin, a place I suspected would be as spiritually charged, especially at this juncture in our lives, as Lourdes.

As the world worships the pleasures of Paris, it forgets that France is a Catholic country. Long before tour buses plied the French highways, millions of pilgrims were inspired to hit the road in search of miracles. Lourdes was the best known destination, but for many Catholics, the Black Virgins have also engendered their own devotion.

Some believe these darkly colored statues, scattered at sacred sites throughout Europe, are throwbacks to pagan icons. Others maintain they are simply statues carved from dark woods that have become blackened by candle smoke over time.

Whatever their origins, they are believed to act -- sometimes miraculously -- on behalf of those who seek help from the Virgin Mary.

Rachel, Tina and I were embarking on our own pilgrimage. We wanted to give thanks for Rachel’s restored health, of course. But we also had a new twist in our family story.

A visit to Lourdes

We spent three days in Lourdes, whirling by thousands in scores of languages to bathing in the springs to marching in the nighttime candlelight processions. Then we set off.

We broke the 155-mile drive from Lourdes to Rocamadour at Moissac, a place that my art-history-loving heart was set on seeing. Moissac is home to a 12th century Benedictine abbey and church that boasts one of the most outstanding carved walls, called tympanum, of Romanesque art. I had been dazzled two years before when I visited some of the great Romanesque churches of Burgundy, including the one at Vezelay, so I hoped to be dazzled here again.

We pulled into the medieval section of the city on a Sunday afternoon, quiet but for the cafes tending to the small but steady trickle of tourists to the abbey. Our $7 entry fee gained us access to the cloister, where the carvings, like those at Vezelay, had sustained significant damage in the 16th century during the Reformation, with its tide of anti-Catholic sentiment. But unlike those at Vezelay, they had not been repaired, robbing them of some of their visceral power.

Still, I could clearly see St. Martin cutting his cloak in two to clothe a beggar and an angel of God returning the miraculously restored garment. In one corner, a moon with a smiling face was held aloft by two angels; its relation to a biblical passage was lost on me, but its bliss was not.

These carvings were examples of great storytelling. The people got their marching orders from these works, which told them how to live, and that charity would be rewarded and greed punished.

The tympanum over the main entry doors was in spectacular shape. As Christ listens to St. John’s vision of the Apocalypse, rows of crowned elders sit at Jesus’ side and below his feet, many with musical instruments, seemingly waiting to serenade the redeemed to heaven. I could have stared all day.

Inside the basilica were more reasons to bond with early Christian art. A brooding, majestic head of Christ from the original Roman altar was mounted on one wall. Tina favored the colorful carved-wood tableaux throughout the church, showing the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, Mary mourning over her son’s body and Christ’s burial.

We spent the night at Le Moulin de Moissac, the city’s grand old hotel along the Tarn River. A garden-filled park runs past it, buffering it from the city, and the silence was deep, punctuated only by the calls of water birds.

We savored the large, high-ceilinged rooms, each idiosyncratically decorated. On the walls of my sister’s room, several plastic sculptures celebrated the joys of winter sports. Mine had Asian motifs, seemingly done by the same artist who decorated the dining room, where we fortified ourselves at the large breakfast buffet the next morning.

Cliff-top perch

Just outside Moissac, we picked up the A20, exiting near Cahors onto a country road that wound through hilly canyons gouged out by rivers. Where the Pyrenees were powerful, rounded waves, this was a land of crags, clefts and marbled dimples.

Rocamadour is part of the Midi-Pyrenees region where southwestern France meets the mountains, but it has more in common geologically with the adjacent Massif Central, full of river-hewn gorges and towns perched along them.

By the 12th century, Catholic villagers had turned a grotto above the slow-flowing Alzou River into a shrine where they worshiped a crudely carved statue of Mother and Child. Despite its roughness, it was linked to several miracles, making Rocamadour among the premier medieval pilgrimage sites of Western Europe.

Rocamadour sits high atop a cliff and can be reached in two ways. By happenstance, we came from the bottom, up a steep and narrow road so terrifying that Tina had a death grip on the steering wheel as Rachel prayed in the back seat. We realized the next day that although the top approach was significantly less picturesque, it was also significantly less terrifying.

The thrill ride no longer mattered once we reached the hotel, Les Esclargies. This tasteful, modern building, with its glass walls, light woods and sisal carpets, exuded a sort of Marin ambience in southwestern France. The back of the hotel opened onto a private oak forest, bordered in one corner by a pool. The crushed-gravel driveway was lined with lavender bushes, on top of which blue butterflies danced.

The hotel is a five-minute walk to the pathway -- lined by life-size 19th century stations of the cross -- that descends into Rocamadour. There’s an elevator, but we walked. We had to stop and admire the panorama along the way, the way the town clung to the cliff side and the roller-coaster scenery of tree-cloaked chasms, everything attempting to thwart gravity.

By the time we got to the bottom and the main attraction, the Courtyard of the Churches, one of the chapels was already closed, and others would be shutting a couple of hours later at 6 p.m. Sounds of prayer drew us to Notre-Dame chapel, where the daily 5 p.m. Mass was beginning. We quickly took seats.

I stole a glance at Rachel. The chapel was dark, obscuring the Black Virgin’s thin, stick-like silhouette and the strikingly adult face of the child on her knee. Rachel looked as radiant as I felt. This Mary didn’t attract the multitudes that flocked to Lourdes -- we were a humble group of three Belgians and three Americans -- but she had been a beacon of hope for almost a thousand years, hidden away during the Reformation and returned to the chapel built for her after the original grotto collapsed in 1476.

“I come before you, Our Lady of Rocamadour, knowing that you always answer the prayers of those who turn to you,” reads the official prayer. I reviewed in my mind the long list of friends and family stricken with cancer, a list that now included my mother, Rachel’s grandmother. We had borne this sadness throughout our trip, and we now prayed for a miracle, knowing that the answer to our petitions might be tranquillity, if not time.

Pilgrim stairway

When we had arrived, Rachel had hoped to climb the town’s famed pilgrim stairway -- 216 steps in all -- on her knees, as the most devout have done. We talked her out of it, wanting to visit the five chapels, the basilica and crypt that surround the Courtyard of the Churches.

The 19th century brought extensive restorations that one guidebook called “unfortunate,” but I found much to embrace in the remaining Romanesque elements, including the remarkable frescoes of St. Michael in the tiny cliff-hugging room above the terrace.

I admired the feat of engineering in the subterranean Crypt of Miracles, where St. Amadour’s body lay until it was burned during the Reformation. The discovery of the 12th century hermit’s uncorrupted corpse had triggered a spate of miracles and prompted the village’s name, Rock of Amadour. I also noticed that, as visitors emerged from the chapels, they stopped and basked in the serenity of the courtyard, wrapped in white limestone and bathed in the shadow of the mountain.

That night, we treated ourselves to one of the region’s gourmet destinations, the Restaurant du Chateau, known for its local specialties. After we had settled in at a table under the oaks, I ordered a tartare of wild river salmon, then wished I had room for the cassoulet that Rachel ordered.

As we ate, we shared our impressions. My sister was moved by its role as a physical and spiritual sanctuary for Catholics who burrowed into the cliffs for protection from their persecutors. Rachel felt all the more connected to her faith. And I had not felt such spiritual power in a place since I visited Assisi in Italy and the stunning frescoes of Duccio, Giotto and Fra Angelico and the pilgrims who gathered in St. Francis’ tomb.

We would talk about Rocamadour for weeks after our return as Rachel prepared to leave for Franciscan College, a tiny Catholic school in Ohio. I suspect that, had Rachel chosen any other college, the significance of our journey would have been largely lost on her classmates.

Somehow, I think the cute boy she met the other day will find it a most compelling story.

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travel@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The pilgrims’ trail in France

THE BEST WAY

From LAX to Paris, nonstop service is provided on Air France and Air Tahiti Nui.

Connecting service (change of planes) is offered on United, Delta, American, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Continental and KLM. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $481. From LAX to Lourdes, connecting service is offered on Air France (requires a change of airport from DeGaulle to Orly). Restricted round-trip fares begin at $755.

TELEPHONES

To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 33 (country code for France), 5 (the city code) and the local number.

WHERE TO STAY

Le Moulin de Moissac, Esplanade du Moulin 82200, Moissac; 6332-8888, www.lemoulindemoissac.com. A converted mill that dates to the 15th century and offers 36 rooms, many with views of the Tarn River. The first floor is an airy restaurant with a piano for nighttime entertainment and a side room where an extensive breakfast buffet, included in the room price, is offered. Guests also have free use of a luxury subterranean spa that includes tea and snack stations and plush towels. Doubles from $130.

Les Esclargies, Les Esclargies, Rocamadour; 6538-7323, www .esclargies.com. A contemporary hotel constructed in 2002 and decorated in acorn tans, sage greens and birch browns. Large modern windows look out on oaks, boxwood hedges, lavender bushes and other California-familiar plants. Breakfast is served on an outdoor patio for $16 per person, but otherwise, no restaurant on-site. Pool has comfortable lounges and a shower. Doubles from $109.

Hotel du Chateau, Route du Chateau, Rocamadour; 6533-6222, www.hotel chateaurocamadour.com. The rooms are small with unremarkable decor, but the setting is a fantastic woodland with covered pool and tennis courts. It’s just steps from the walkway that leads down to the Courtyard of the Churches. The public rooms adjoining the hotel’s restaurant are elegant, so breakfast, which costs an extra $14, is a treat. Doubles from $116.

WHERE TO EAT

Restaurant du Chateau, Route du Chateau, Rocamadour; 6533-6222, www.hotelchateaurocamadour.com. The kitchen focuses on regional specialties such as locally caught salmon and the ubiquitous duck. The long wine list includes several offerings from the Cahors appellation, the wines greatly benefiting from the limestone soil. Diners sit under the oak trees, where gracious servers attend to them. Meals $20 to $80.

TO LEARN MORE

French Government Tourist Office, www.franceguide.com.