I spilled the puzzle pieces onto the table and asked my daughter to start putting them together.

“I can’t,” she said, “You’ve got to show me the picture on the puzzle box. I need to know what it’s supposed to look like.”

Tell me about it. As you and I look at the jumbled up puzzle pieces of our lives, we too scream out for an image of what it’s supposed to look like - the picture, the pattern, the map, the model, of how we’re supposed to make sense of it all.

And there’s no shortage of those. Family, friends, neighbors, celebrities, and athletes all vie for our attention and scream at us to use them as our model. Many of us grew up in homes that didn’t provide us with suitable models – or at least perfect ones  - and look where we are. That’s why so much of life is spent looking for them.

That’s where Jesus comes in. Jesus is the pattern. He tells us that the life worth living is the one that looks like his.

We do this by reading, studying, meditating, and, outlandishly, by consuming him. This is the mystery of the Eucharist. When we eat something we absorb its nutrients and turn it into the energy we need to live. Jesus asks us to eat him – to literally and metaphorically take him into ourselves not only for the energy it provides, but for the kind of person into which it makes us.

Consume Jesus. Be consumed by Jesus. This is how the puzzle pieces are meant to come together.