Communion on the Moon

Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first two men to successfully navigate from the Earth to the Moon, walk on the surface, gather samples of lunar rocks and return safely to Earth in July of 1969. Aldrin says he did have a communion service on the moon's surface shortly after landing the Lunar Module "Eagle" on the Sea of Tranquillity. He told the story in an article in Guideposts magazine in 1999, an issue of the publication that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the lunar landing.

When the Eagle touched down on the moon on Sunday July 20, 1969, Aldrin took out the communion elements that he had brought along for the trip and put them on a small table.  He then radioed the Houston Space Centre to request a few moments of silence. Aldrin began his radio transmission to the Houston Space Centre,

"Houston, This is the (lunar module) 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."

At the point, NASA had decided to blackout the broadcast of the communion service.

From the lunar surface, Aldrin then read "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, Revised Standard Version). and took communion.

In Aldrin ‘s own words..

The first food and drink consumed on the moon was the reserved sacrament of communion. At first, it was kept secret. To mark the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, Bosco Peters has posted the details of this Christian act of worship 235,000 miles from the earth. The First Communion on the Moon is now one of The Episcopal Church's 'lesser feasts and fasts', he writes.

“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.I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute Deke Slayton 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…Eagle’s metal body creaked.

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 Tranquillity.

 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.”

The memoirs of Buzz Aldrin and the Tom Hanks’s Emmy-winning HBO mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon (1998), made people aware of this act of Christian worship 235,000 miles from Earth.