An omission bigger than the flag-planting

I'm reading mixed reviews about First Man. There is, of course, the controversy about omitting the planting of an American flag on the moon, although other scenes apparently make it clear that this was an unmistakably US mission.

But something else that took place in the minutes after Apollo 11's landing that not only doesn't make it into the movie, but is so rarely remarked upon that I just now found out about it:

The first man on the Moon may have been Neil Armstrong, but the first meal on the Moon was the Lord’s Supper. But this is not in the film.

We do not see it in First Man, but shortly after arriving at the moon, “second man” Buzz Aldrin said over the radio: “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.” He then observed thanksgiving his way, by taking out a small communion kit that had been prepared by the Houston church (Webster Presbyterian) where he served as an elder. In his 2009 book Magnificent Desolation, Aldrin describes the surreal scene this way:

I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out the communion elements along with a three-by-five card on which I had written the words of Jesus: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.” I poured a thimbleful of wine from a sealed plastic container into a small chalice, and waited for the wine to settle down as it swirled in the one-sixth Earth gravity of the Moon. . . . I silently read the Bible passage as I partook of the wafer and the wine, and offered a private prayer for the task at hand and the opportunity I had been given.

Armstrong, a deist, did not join Aldrin in taking communion, though he respectfully observed while Aldrin took the elements.

Though the U.S. government at the time refused to make public the Lord’s Supper aspect of Apollo 11’s mission, Aldrin’s faith was not a secret. On the mission’s return voyage, Aldrin read Psalm 8:3–4 (KJV) over a radio broadcast: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the Moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him? And the Son of Man, that thou visitest him?”

For Armstrong, the Moon landing was about what men could accomplish: mankind’s “giant leap.” For Aldrin, the landing was a reminder of God’s glory and mankind’s relative smallness. What is man that thou art mindful of him? 

I suppose, given the fact that Armstrong is the movie's protagonist, that delving into Aldrin's eucharistic moment might have diluted the intended focus. But, ultimately, the focus will be on He who created all celestial bodies. That ought to fit into some account of the moon landing.