The savior to millions of Christians throughout the world has been busy lately, not with stopping the wars in the Middle East or helping the earthquake-stricken island of Haiti - but in leaving his all-too-familiar image in fruit and tubers.

You read that right. The man who supposedly walked on water and once turned a few fish and loaves of bread into a meal for the multitudes has been reduced to making appearances in sliced oranges and raw potatoes. Talk about a fall from glory.

“One morning I cut this orange and as it falls in half,” Paul Kulniszewski of Lockport, New York told MSNBC.com. “I’m awe-struck by the image that I see contained in that orange and I quickly call my wife and say come and see this. Tell me it’s not my eyes, am I seeing what I’m seeing and she says, ‘Oh my god, yes, that’s fantastic.’”

What he saw in the orange is the white pith stretched into the shape of the letter Y. Kulniszewsky says it is the image of Jesus on the cross with the face of his mother below. Obviously, eyes can be deceiving.

Kulniszewski is so convinced that his “Citrus Jesus,” as one news service dubbed it, is a sign fropm on high that he’s preserved it in a jar along with a rosary. Perhaps the compost bin would be more appropriate.

“I just feel I was meant to share it,” Kulniszewski told the Lockport Journal. “I attend (church) regularly but I’m nothing special. It just means someone else is in control.” Someone who appears to people inside of an orange?

The man from Galilee isn’t content to just leave his image in fruit. According to MSNBC.com, Jesus has also been leaving his mark in the root vegetable that provides Americans with their favorite junk foods, French Fries and potato chips. Perhaps it’s a warning about greasy fried foods?

Jim and Connie Gross of Marion, Iowa don’t see it that way. They were cutting a potato one day recently when lo and behold a miracle occurred and what they found instead of a plain old white surface was a mark in the shape of a cross like the one poor Jesus hung on for three hours.

Struck with the religious wonder of it all, they quickly put the tuber up on E-Bay. “We need a new trailer for our band equipment, and Jim thought it’d be great to see what we could raise for it,” Connie told UPI.

Seems a bit sacrilegious, doesn’t it?

As for the orange, well, as I see it, the man with his arms above his head is naked and that dark spot between his legs is a thick endowment that even the gods would envy.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italians Sailing Beyond Columbus, and editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, which has been nominated for an American Library Association award. His website is www.avicollimecca.com