Title: Religion as the Deepest Voice of Human Experience Type of Article: Essay Author: Shiela Mores-Baytec

Life is not worth living at all if we do not have something worthy living for. We as humans exists because we cling on a magnificent spiritual sense of well-beingReligion. What is religion? Tracing our history back to our ancestors, our paganistic (believing in idols) standard of living has created what the spaniards identified as a downright way of living. We are considered low class of human beings because we idolized the sun, mountains, moon, animals such as deers, trees and everyhing perceivable in the environment. Yet, many said that we must be thankful to the Spaniards who brought Christianity here in the Philippines. Now we shall concentrate our deep contemplation upon Christianity. Every Sunday, it is an obvious fact that millions of Christians gather for the eucharistic celebration of the mass. They do this to ask favor or give thanks. Still not a few offer themselves to God. Some are sincere, others come for a pleasurely cause. Hence, no matter what we have in our minds, come what may, we always resort to religion. Religion therefore, is the sincerest inner thought governing our deepest well-being and the soul in expressing a strong faith that there is a single supernatural force governing our livesthat is God. Since the cultivation of Catholic Christianity in Rome, a systematic form of worshipping God had founded the very basics of religion. One main factor is Love. Our life beats out of love. We exist as human beings because of love and God Himself expressed His greatest love through His only begotten SonJesus who was known to die on the cross to redeem mankind of worldly sins. We therefore, as saved from the bitter and painful death God is suppose to punish us, gave in return abundant faith that God is indeed powerful and kind. We show faith through signing of the cross and showing reverence in our every word, thought and deed. Men who expresses faith are called the believers of God, and without them, there would be no more religion at all. Our belief in God has converted our individualism deeper in meaning because of the presence of the eucharist. What is the eucharist and its connection to our lives. Eucharist can be best explained through Jesus last supper with his desciples. There he has prayed, took the bread, broke the bread and together they ate. He then took the cup, then after some prayers of offering, He let His disciples drink the wine in the same cup where he drank. In this story, taking the bread connotes the full acceptance of Gods will without any hesitation, no matter what cause it may bring. It dignifies mans humility and belief in Him. Breaking the bread is a 1

noble act of taking not just a piece of us but half of what we have equally and whole-heartedly. It applies not just to the material well-being but most of all to the spiritual capabilities that is given to us. All of us bereft with special talents that may not be present to others, and that we are not expected to hide whatever wealth we are entitled inside. Share with Love. That was His mesaage when his son died in the cross. Eucharistic living therefore is an act of Christian love practicing the three noblest acts Jesus exemplified. Sometimes our attention is caught up much with the ease and pleasures offered by materialism, thus we forget so we become the lost children of God. We are like the lost sheep of the Good Shepherd. In our period of wanderings, we experience different sorrows which we thought God had given as trials. Trials and sorrows are not actually created by God to test human faith, it is the human who created their own sorrow. It is our decisions that created our fate. Decisions that drives faith away from God. Others get drowned forever, others survive. And only in that revival we realize Gods loveand that is through religion. So religion is the deepest sense of being human, of having faith, love and belief in God after all the experiences that we had.