Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends,

Fifty years ago, when American astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, a devout Christian, made history landing on the moon, the first thing he did was give thanks to God.

As the men prepared for the next phase of their mission, Aldrin got on the comm system and spoke to the ground crew back on Earth. “I would like to request a few moments of silence,” he said. “I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way.”

Then he reached for the wine and bread he’d brought to space—the first foods ever poured or eaten on the moon.

Aldrin says. “In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.” After taking the elements, Aldrin says he “sensed especially strongly my unity with our church back home, and with the church everywhere.”

There, amidst what he would later describe as “Beautiful, beautiful. Magnificent desolation,” Aldrin drank and ate of the simple elements with which Christ reaches to us across the intimate vastness of time and the pregnant emptiness of space.

Few of us will ever reach the literal or figurative heights that Aldrin did. All of us will though, at some point, sit amidst the vastness and even emptiness of life. We will stand in magnificent desolation — and then, even there, Christ will call us to take and eat.

Yours in Christ,

Robert