Pope Benedict’s preference for the Latin Mass is a good way to enter the question of what makes for good worship. I like the Latin Mass. I love the combination of sound, sight and scent that is the medieval rite in a cathedral setting.

But, I am not a Catholic and I do not rely on the rite as an instrument of grace. Rather, I appreciate it as art: art that stirs, not saves my soul. The Eucharist is, however, the central rite of salvation for billions of worshipers. What is it that communicates to its participants the hope of salvation, even immediate divine presence, and what impedes it? My Tennessee neighbors drive considerable distance from the parish around the corner to attend a Vietnamese mass. They are not Vietnamese and as close as he has gotten to Asia in his 92 years was Guadalcanal. So, why not Latin?

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The Latter-day Saints buried their prophet on Saturday. Thousands attended the service in person and millions more faithful watched in chapels around the globe, as well as on the internet. What they saw was an unusually personal ceremony for a very public man who led and to large degree defined the contemporary Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Notwithstanding the numbers and titles of participants, Gordon Hinckley’s funeral was a family affair both in word and sacrament. It was an extraordinary display of what makes Mormonism tick.

Gordon Bitner Hinckley died at the age of 97, having been in the church’s leading councils since 1958 and served as its fifteenth president since 1995. He shaped the church through a half century of growth in 160 countries. A third of its present membership joined during his tenure as president. His counsel to them was more practical than sublime: be better neighbors, stand a little taller, and choose the right. He was much loved for living these virtues. Displaying remarkable vigor late in life, he traveled to meet church members on every continent, responding to their needs with curricular, welfare, and building programs whose costs are impossible to imagine and no one will admit.

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