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When the lunar module of Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to do something tough: Wait. They had to open the door of their lunar lander and walk on the unknown surface of a completely different world. But for the moment, their mission has ordered them to pause before the big event.
Thus, Aldrin spent his time doing something unexpected, which no one had ever tried before. Alone and overwhelmed by anticipation, he took part in the first Christian sacrament ever celebrated on the moon – a rite of Christian communion.
Aldrin's Lunar Communion has since been shrouded in mystery and confusion, but the rite itself was relatively simple. The astronaut was also an elder at the Webster Presbyterian Church, and before leaving in space in 1969, he obtained special permission. and wine with him to space and give himself communion.
Men had already prayed in space, but Aldrin was about to go further – literally and figuratively. Part of his mission was not only to land on the moon, but to walk on it. To prepare, he took communion after landing the lunar module of the Eagle on the Sea of Tranquility of the Moon during a period of several hours' stopping to allow astronauts to recover of their space flight and to prepare for their lunar march. used by Buzz Aldrin during his lunar communion. (Credit: David Frohman, President of Peachstate Historical Consulting, Inc.)
The mood of the module was sober. Armstrong and Aldrin knew how important their mission was. "I certainly knew that it was the culmination of the work of 300,000 or 400,000 people in ten years and that the hopes and outward appearance of the nation rested largely on how the results were obtained, "recalled Armstrong . history.
As the men prepared for the next phase of their mission, Aldrin went to the communication system and spoke to the ground crew on Earth. "I would like to ask for a few moments of silence," he said . "I invite everyone to listen, wherever they are and wherever they are, to gaze for a moment at the events of the last few hours and give thanks in their own way."
Then he searched for the wine and bread that he had brought into space – the first foods ever poured or eaten on the moon. "I poured the wine into the chalice that our church had given me." In the sixth gravity of the moon, the wine was slowly and graciously rolled on the side of the cup, "writes Later, Aldrin read scriptures and ate, Armstrong looked softly but did not participate
Aldrin felt that the service should be broadcast to the world, but atheist activist Madalyn Murray O & rsquo; Hair, once nicknamed "America's most hated woman" for her activism in favor of the separation of church and state, condemned indirectly the communion service.A few months earlier, O Hair had sued NASA after the Apollo 8 astronauts read the Book of Genesis during a broadcast made on the day 1968, when they became the first humans to orbit around the moon
A handwritten map containing a ve Biblical rset that Buzz Aldrin planned to broadcast on Earth during a Holy Communion lunar service, presented in a space auction in Dallas, Texas, 2007. (Photo credit: LM Otero / AP Photo)
Although O "The case of Hair was finally dismissed, he made an impression on NASA officials, who feared that any openly religious display could open the agency to another lawsuit. When Aldrin said to the director of flight crew operations that he was planning to broadcast his communion service, the director told him to go from there. before and to commune, but "keep your comments more general."
reports that Aldrin was bringing communion bread on the spaceship, he kept the ceremony unobtrusive and, out of respect for the debate on religion on the moon, kept the ceremony confined to the spaceship and not the surface of the moon.
Aldrin was not the only astronaut to experience religious rituals in outer space. In 1994, three Catholic astronauts took Holy Communion aboard Space Shuttle Endeavor. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon reportedly recited the Jewish Kiddush Shabbat prayer in outer space (he died later when the space shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003). And the Russian cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov took a relic of St. Serafim from Sarnov, a Russian orthodox saint, to space in 2017.
The first space communion was lived only by two men, but it has not been forgotten by the wider world. The Sunday of Lunar Communion is still celebrated annually at Webster Presbyterian and elsewhere to commemorate the event, and Aldrin spoke and wrote about the experience later in life. However, the discreet nature of the ceremony in space itself later led to rumors that it happened secretly.
Aldrin may not have used skullduggery to consume communion aboard the lunar module, but he ended up regretting it. In his memoirs of 2010, he wrote that he had come to wonder if he had done the right thing by celebrating a Christian ritual in the space. "We have come to space in the name of all humanity – whether they be Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics or atheists," he wrote . "But at the time, I could think of a better way to recognize the experience of Apollo 11 than by giving thanks to God."
