Recently, Professor Kathleen Flake of Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn., who has written a history of the Reed Smoot hearings in the U.S. Senate and is LDS, wrote an essay for the Washington Post �On Faith� Web page. In her essay, �How to bury a prophet,� she explains how the funeral of President Gordon B. Hinckley is an example of how families have the highest priority in Mormonism, even over the formal categories of Church organization and office. It can be found here.

Mormon funerals have a minimal formal outline, including personal tributes by family members, sermons about the afterlife and the resurrection through the Atonement of Christ, and music. One Mormon funeral I attended was for a close family friend, Tatsui Sato, a remarkable Japanese man who was possibly the first person baptized into the LDS Church in Japan after World War II. He was a chemical engineering professor fluent in English, and went on to translate the LDS scriptures into Japanese, and Japanese genealogy records into English. The person who baptized his wife was an Air Force pilot named Boyd K. Packer, who is now the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. When Elder Packer spoke at Brother Sato's funeral, it was a talk by the former pilot who had learned Japanese children's songs from Brother Sato's son. The fact that he is an Apostle was not part of his role that day.

A point to remember is this: every faithful Mormon man is a priest, capable of ministering in the ordinances of the Church. Every adult son is a priest who can dedicate a grave as a temporary resting place for his father.

The priesthood is exercised most often in the context of family needs: baptizing children; laying hands on them to give the Gift of the Holy Ghost; ordaining to successive stages of the priesthood of young men at ages 12, 14 and 16, culminating in their being ordained elders at age 18 preparatory to serving a mission or going off to college or serving as a missionary. Fathers give blessings to family members when they are sick and when they are facing challenges.

Gordon B. Hinckley's eldest son, as it so happens, is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, patterned after the 70 missionaries ordained by Christ to assist the apostles. But it was in his capacity as son and priesthood holder that he dedicated his father's grave, just as he probably gave his father a blessing or two during his recent illness. As Kathleen Flake notes, Mormons believe the Church is temporary, while it is the family that is eternal, and that our most important and original relationship to Heavenly Father is as His children.