oa De verloren zoon

Augustine’s conversion to Christianity was also a choice for a life of chastity and continence. The machismo complex of the absent father and the suffering of the self-sacrificing mother seem to have been crucial in Augustine’s decision to become a christian. His conversion to christianity and celibacy is both a confirmation of his strong attachment to his mother and a protest against her narcissistic claims. As a young man he resisted the wishes and ambitions of his mother by indulging in heresy and carnality, on becoming a christian he preferred to distance himself from the ambiguity and ambivalence of life - as a convert, embracing a distant God Father, he distanced himself from his own basic desires and chose to remain a son forever. Elected to serve the church, the Mother of us all, he expressed the clerical motivation of a lost son.