<p>Religiosity and spirituality are central to the lives of Filipinos, yet limited research has examined their role in well-being. Although traditionally viewed as distinct constructs, religiosity and spirituality are deeply intertwined among Filipinos, with religious practice serving as a pathway for cultivating spiritual experience. Given the established role of spiritual experience in well-being, daily spiritual experience may represent a key mechanism through which religious practice translates into greater life satisfaction, yet research directly examining this mediating pathway remains limited. A further concern is that widely used spirituality measures, including the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES; Underwood and Teresi, Annals of Behavioral Medicine 24:22–33, 2002), have been criticized for containing items that overlap with mental and social health outcomes, raising tautological questions about observed associations. The present study addressed both concerns. A theistic 5-item version of the DSES was validated among Filipino Catholics and demonstrated superior psychometric fit over the full 13-item version. Using this validated measure, the study examined whether private religious practices predict life satisfaction and whether daily spiritual experience mediates this relationship in a sample of 1,189 Filipino Catholics (<i>M</i>_age = 18.86, <i>SD</i> = 4.67). Results showed that private religious practices positively predicted life satisfaction, with daily spiritual experience serving as a significant mediator. These findings suggest that private religious practices enhance life satisfaction by fostering an experiential sense of closeness to God that is distinct from general psychological well-being, while also providing a psychometrically robust measure of theistic spirituality for future research among the Filipino faithful.</p>