Easter plans already, when it's almost two months until Lent starts? Is this going to be like "Christmas" for three months? (Speaking of which, I don't have the Christmas decorations down yet.)
What's the use of the danged liturgical calendar if everyone's always two seasons ahead!?
Do you think that planning and preparing for Lent and Holy Week on the scale of a papal liturgy might require more than moving the ribbon from the front of the Missal to the middle?
Maybe if some of our local dioceses and parishes actually PLANNED and PREPARED some of the liturgies with the care to detail that they give to the annual charity drive, the experience might be a little more prayerful.
If you look at the two liturgical books Archbishop Marini prepared with Pope John Paul II, the Ordo Exsequiarum (the Funeral Rites of the Roman Pontiff) and the Ordo Rituum Conclavis (the Conclave Rites) and the first liturgical book he prepared for Pope Benedict XVI, the Ordo Rituum Pro Ministerii Petrini Initio (the Rites for the Beginning of the Petrine Ministry of the Bishop of Rome) and its preliminary study, Sede Apostolica Vacante (Vacancy of the Apostolic See: History, Legislation, Rites, Places and Things) - and then you remember how beautifully those liturgies were celebrated on international TV, you'd realize that these things don't just happen.
Thank God that Pope Benedict and those he has working for him actually care enough about the teaching potential of the papal liturgies to PLAN and PREPARE them well in advance. As the blogger put it "Leading By Example."