The Confessions of Saint Augustine
St. Augustine main conflict was accepting God in his life. He struggle to acknowledge that God has possessed him. His father was a pagan, but his mother was such a devoted Christian woman; she dedicated her life to pray for the conversion of her son. St. Augustine was a teacher and during his youth days he encounters conflicts with Christian morality. He questioned himself many time “who am I” and “who are men?” he was a sinner and lived a very disorderly life. For example, as a child he was not baptized, he was not initiated in the Christian formation and he became afraid to sin after receiving the sacrament. This kept enriching his Manichean beliefs, he was “seduced and he seduced others, deceived and deceiving by various desires” and his doubts about encountering the truth kept increasing.
He was too proud, too full of vanities, he had affairs with many women, and even had a son, but he realizes that his vision that happiness cannot be found in worldly pleasures but in the search for truth beyond the material world. “My heart was made dark by sorrow, and whatever I looked upon was death” he refers to the death of his closes friend whom he had perverted, and whose death he felt and wept bitterly. He became very desperate, confused and mad because he …show more content…
While he was there he discovered the humanity and the sermons of St. Ambrose, he gradually began forming a concept of catholic doctrine. He turned away from the Manichaean’s. Saint Ambrose was a great influence on him; by listening to him he gradually began emerging from his mistakes. “Although I was not anxious to learn what he said, but merely to hear how he said it – for such bootless concern remained with me, although I had no hope that any way lay open for a man to come to you – yet at the same time with the words, which I loved, there also entered into my mind the things themselves, to which I was