What was the first
liquid and food consumed on the moon ?
I’m betting that most are unaware of this
story.
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."
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