Did you know... Lunar Landing

   

 Forty-three years ago two human beings changed history by 

walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz 

Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even 

more amazing, if only because so few people know about it. "I'm 

talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the 

surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.

     The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at 

his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life 

and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in 

human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow.He 

asked his minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a 

communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. Buzz Aldrin 

took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface 

of the moon. He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface 

for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public

statement:

     “This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to 

ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, 

to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few 

hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended 

radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon,

250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John and he took communion.

     Here is his own account of what happened: "In the radio 

blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine.

I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the 

one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and 

gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture”:

     I am the vine, you are the branches.

     Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit ...

     Apart from me you can do nothing.'

     "I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, 

but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this.

NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray 

O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 

crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly."     "I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks 

for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots 

to the Sea of Tranquility . It was interesting for me to think the 

very first liquid ever poured on the moon and the very first food 

eaten there, were the communion elements."

     "And of course, it 's interesting to think that some of the 

first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ , 

who made the Earth and the moon - and who, in the immortal words 

of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."