Communion

A repost from ten years ago …

Here’s something you did not know.

Go back fifty years ago, to July 20, 1969.

Go up about 240,000 miles or so, to the surface of the Moon.

Yes, I’m talking about Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the Moon.

Two hours and forty minutes after the Lunar Module landed at the Sea of Tranquility, after a lengthy powering-down procedure and various check lists to make sure all systems were okay, Buzz Aldrin found a rare moment of quiet. Since Neil Armstrong had been chosen to take the first step onto the lunar surface and had the whole “what are you going to say?” thing weighing on his shoulders, Aldrin wondered how best he could celebrate the moment, and spent a decent amount of time searching for the perfect gesture. A few weeks before the launch, he came to a decision.

Eight months prior Apollo 8 became the first manned craft to fly around the Moon. On Christmas Eve, 1968, rounding the lunar far side, the three astronauts in the Command Module, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, took turns reading the opening verses of the Book of Genesis. NASA was still coping with the “controversy,” and Deke Slayton, head of the astronaut office, warned Aldrin against any overt broadcast of religious observance over the air.

While Armstrong was finishing up his tasks in the LM, Aldrin brought out a plastic bag from his personal pouch and removed a small flask of wine, a chalice, and some wafers, and set them down on a small ledge. In the one-sixth gravity the wine poured smoothly into the chalice; over the mike Aldrin asked for anyone listening to pause for a moment and give thanks in his or her own way. Then, reading his printed handwriting on a card he prepared on Earth, he spoke a few words from the Book of John:

I am the wine and you are the branches

Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit

For you can do nothing without me

Aldrin then took the wine and the wafer. I do not know if Armstrong partook or not. I do not know if Aldrin suffered any repercussions for ignoring Slayton’s warning. I do not know if Aldrin is a Catholic and if the communion was liturgically valid. Nor do I care, really. What I really find amazing is that it was even done at all, whether considered a mere gesture or a valid sacrament. It gives me a certain, odd type of hope in mankind, it gives me what I suppose is a glimpse into that tiny and fragile part of us that is so cherished by God.

Source: A Man on the Moon (1994) by Andrew Chaikin, 204-205