C. Nyal de Kaye
New member
The following appeared in my emails this morning and is said to be taken from a book by Eric Metaxas. I enjoyed reading it and thought that many others may like it too.
Forty 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.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about it in my book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).
The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder in his Presbyterian Church in Texas at that time. Knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt that he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so this idea was born.
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 read a verse from the Gospel of John, and 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. 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 NASA had requested that I not do this. NASA was 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 bread and swallowed the wine and gave thanks. It was interesting for me to think that 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 words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
Forty 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.
And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about it in my book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).
The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder in his Presbyterian Church in Texas at that time. Knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt that he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so this idea was born.
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 read a verse from the Gospel of John, and 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. 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 NASA had requested that I not do this. NASA was 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 bread and swallowed the wine and gave thanks. It was interesting for me to think that 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 words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
