The church is at 128 16th Avenue North and the Grotto is just to the south of it, set back from 16th Avenue. This statue is the second to be mounted here, the first having been destroyed by vandals in 2012.
Our Lady Of Lourdes is a parallel for
Mary, mother of Jesus or
The Madonna. This name came about as a result of apparitions which appeared to a young girl in the French City of Lourdes beginning on February 11th, 1858, when
Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old girl, first spoke with an apparition that appeared to her in the cave of Massabielle. The apparition introduced herself as
The Immaculate Conception, or
Mary, the mother of Jesus. According to the legend, seventeen further occasions of the appearance of the apparition were reported by Bernadette that year. Bernadette Soubirous was later canonized as a Saint.
Mary, the Mother of Jesus
Her name was Mary, a form of the name Miriam, the famous sister of Moses. The name was common among Jewish women in those days.
A well-known tradition says she was born in Jerusalem, the daughter of Joachim and Ann. Other early sources say Mary was born in Nazareth. There is even an ancient record that points to Sepphoris, a town a few miles from Nazareth, as her birthplace.
Wherever she was born, Mary's life most likely unfolded in the staunch Jewish settlement of Nazareth in the hills of Galilee, not far from the important caravan routes linking Egypt and Mesopotamia.
From: cptryon.org