Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin on the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

St. John Henry Newman wrote in one of his sermons,

notoriety or the making of a noise in the world,

it may be called newspaper fame,

has come to be considered a great good in itself and a ground of veneration.

Now, we don't use the word notoriety or newspaper fame anymore.

We call it celebrity.

What we're really talking about here is the root vice of vanity,

of caring too much about what other people think.

But Newman is right.

We do venerate celebrity.

We venerate it almost more than anything else.

As one social commentator put it,

most secular people would be more excited

if a movie star or a sports star or a rock star

showed up in person at their house, then Christians would be if Jesus

Christ himself walked through the doors of their church on Sunday.

And yet Jesus himself shunned celebrity.

He often fled from large crowds and went off by himself to pray.

In fact, there was only one time when he voluntarily accepted the praise of the mob, the anonymous public, because that one day of anonymous celebrity was enough to show the world just how empty it really is.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallow would be your name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

...