Spirituality and Virgin Mary

You can actually see in the movie that there are a lot of things that had deviated from the original perception of what religion is. Almost all of the traditions in any religion have a similarity. People have mistaken the real thing. We practice the worshipping of idols. Religious people commonly mistake their idea of God for the actual God. This is where religion has gone wrong. It has mistaken the image for truth. It exhibits the lies and hides the truth. The movie also deeply penetrates the collective Filipino egos, psyche and notion of community. Its socio-historical importance lies in its ability to reveal complicated truths about the Philippine culture of religion.

We usually associate spirituality and religion. But they are totally two different things. Spirituality is the level to which one is able to see past their own self to the many wonders that exist within and around in this plane of existence. In simple terms, it is our ability to tap into areas of life beyond what is normal. Those are easily seen, heard, felt and smelled that any other average human can't. An example scenario in which Elsa walks in and claims to be able to see and commune with the Virgin Mary. This mysterious revelation transforms her from an unpretentious and serene young woman into a hallowed spiritual medium for the Virgin Mary. Religion in the other hand is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power especially a personal God or gods. In the later scenes, you can see that the religious faith has dominantly been exercised by the people in a town of Cupang. Being Elsa as the self-proclaimed prophet in the movie, Cupang is known to be the new Lourdes where people from all around come to have their afflictions cured. Meantime, Elsa's devotees begin to sell miraculous water and religious articles, the town mayo thinks of recreating.

As what we can see in our Philippine culture, we have been blinded what is the truth as what I’ve stated in earlier paragraph.