COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

I knew it might happen. Someday. I just didn’t think it would be right next door. Workers at the Bodega Chocolates company in Fountain Valley believe that the Virgin Mary appeared in their chocolate factory two weeks ago in the form of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

It wasn’t really the Virgin Mary herself. It was a chocolate likeness of her, which gives a whole new meaning to “sweet mother of God.”

Martucci Angiano, one of the owners of Bodega Chocolates, let her publicist know about the apparition — we’ll get to why a chocolate company has a publicist later — and within hours, the story was being carried worldwide, including on CNN and the BBC News.

As a lifelong Catholic, a former altar boy and the product of 12 years of teaching and character building by Irish nuns and priests — OK, the last part didn’t work — I have always been interested in claims of apparitions by the Virgin Mary, of which there have been many.

You might remember the grilled cheese sandwich that a Miami woman claimed bore the likeness of the Virgin Mary in November 2004. Neither the story nor the sandwich got much attention until the woman listed the sandwich on eBay and sold it to an online casino for $28,000. The same casino later bought a pretzel in the shape of the Virgin Mary for $10,600, none of which I understand but all of which proves that if you think God works in strange ways, you should try people.

My first close encounter with an apparition of the Virgin Mary, which Catholic scholars call a Marian apparition, was in 1958 AD in my neighborhood in the Bronx. Two women claimed they had seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary on the platform at the 238th Street station on the Lexington Avenue El. The whole neighborhood was bonkers for weeks, and to this day, I have never been able to figure out why the Virgin Mary would one, be on the Lexington Avenue line, and two, get off at 238th Street, which is only one stop from the end of the line at 241st Street.

It doesn’t make any sense. But then, that is why these things are called matters of faith.

The chocolate apparition in Fountain Valley was the result of a testing vat whose spout was not closed tight at the end of the day on Friday, Aug. 10. Jacinto Santacruz, 26, was the first to arrive at Bodega Chocolates on the following Monday morning and was stopped cold when she saw the mound of chocolate that had been dripping all weekend. It was about 2 inches tall and, according to Santacruz, a perfect likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“It is absolutely a miracle,” Jacinto told the Los Angeles Times.

We’ll get to the miracle part shortly, but let’s deal with the likeness first, which you may have seen when the story first broke.

Like most of these things, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, much like seeing shapes in clouds. I did think the chocolate shape looked like a person, maybe even a person in a veil. But a perfect likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe? I guess you had to be there, which by the way, a lot of people have. The chocolate figure has brought a constant stream of people, from the mildly curious to true believers, some snapping pictures of themselves and the figure, others leaving flowers and candles behind.

The chocolate and possibly miraculous figure was on display in the Bodega Chocolate gift shop for a few days but is now kept in a plastic case in a back room and brought out on request. How long will the chocolate apparition last? Hard to say, says owner Martucci Angiano.

“We don’t do molded chocolate all that much,” Angiano told the Los Angeles Times.

Apparently, faith is faith, but chocolate is chocolate. Oh, and why does a chocolate company have a publicist?

Hollywood, baby. That’s why.

Bodega Chocolates is a chocolatier to the stars and part of the five-star swag at most of the major awards shows — Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, Country Music Awards and the Latin Grammys.

I did find an interesting note on their website, considering they now house a chocolate apparition of the Virgin Mary: “Bodega Chocolates’ luxurious confections are Kosher-certified.”

Hmm. This could get complicated. Can a chocolate likeness of the Virgin Mary be Kosher-certified? Maybe the Interfaith Council can sort it out. This is way beyond my pay grade.

Although, oddly enough, there was a similar wrinkle to the apparition on the Lexington Avenue El in my old neighborhood those many years ago. Sam’s candy store on 236th Street was our equivalent of a general store. Almost everyone of every age stopped by sometime during the day to get a newspaper or some Bazooka gum or cigarettes or an egg cream or whatever.

During the hubbub over the apparition at 238th Street, you couldn’t get into Sam’s sideways, morning to night. Everyone on the block was in there talking about it for hours on end, plus reporters, plus cops, plus a few very strange people no one had ever seen before.

At one point, Sam somehow got hold of a poster of Our Lady of Fatima, who many Catholics believe appeared to three small children in 1917 in the village of Fatima in Portugal. It was clever marketing on Sam’s part, trying to seal his store’s status as the official meeting place of the 238th Street Apparition Discussion Group. But the poster was an odd touch sitting in the window of Sam’s Candy Store, considering that Sam’s full name was Sam Greenbaum. Then again, if Sam Greenbaum can put a poster of Our Lady of Fatima in his window to peddle egg creams, maybe a Kosher-certified chocolate Virgin Mary in Fountain Valley isn’t that big a stretch.

I tell ya. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

I gotta go.