February 11 is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the catholic bloggers have all sorts of links.
TeaatTrianon says the best way to learn about the reason is to read Franz Werfel's novel:
Werfel, a highly respected literary writer who was an outspoken anti-Nazi from Vienna, became a Jewish refugee who barely escaped death from the Nazis in 1940, and wrote this moving story to fulfill a promise he made to God....
As he and his wife were hiding out in the little village of Loudres while trying to escape to freedom in the USA during WWII, Werfel felt the Nazi noose tightening around them and realizing that they might well be caught and executed, he made a promise to God to write about the "song of Bernadette" that he had been deeply inspired by during their clandestine stay in Lourdes.
But InCaritateNonFictaBlog is there on a pilgrimage and has lots of photos, if you are curious...he also has Holy Land pilgrimage links.
(headsup Father Z)
There are Lourdes statues in small grottos all over the place here in the Philippines: lots of middle class people have a grotto built into their garden wall... and come to think of it I've seen grotto shrines in the US, New Mexico and Minnesota in church gardens, or on private land...
And this doesn't include the numerous statues of Mary in front of houses...don't laugh too hard at them: Our next door neighbor in PA had one, and he and his five sons were all construction workers or coal miners...
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