HOUSTON, Texas — Communion was the first meal ever taken on the moon, thanks to astronaut Buzz Aldrin taking them with him on the Apollo 11 voyage, which marked its 48th anniversary in July.
Aldrin, who stepped out of the spacecraft just after Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969, asked the public watching from back home to “give thanks in his or her own way.” Then he turned off the broadcast and read John 15:5 — “I am the vine and you are the branches” — over the surface of the moon.
He had intended to read his communion passage to the audience back home, but at the last minute, he was asked not to, he said. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while they orbited the moon.
“I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me,” Aldrin said, according to The Christian Post. “In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup.”
As Aldrin thanked God, he said it was meaningful for him that “the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.” (TAB)
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