I found Saint Augustine’s conversion story very relatable in the fact that there was a seed planted early on by his mother which laid dormant until philosophy activated its growth. In the Confessions, Augustine remarks several times that his mother had always been leading him on the path of Catholicism, even when he didn’t realize it: sometimes in teaching him certain morals, other times by exemplary and virtuous action on her part. He ended up, of course, falling in with the Manicheans in his earlier adult life, although the seeds that his mother planted were still lying dormant. Eventually, as he meets Saint Ambrose, he sees in Ambrose’s teachings answers to the philosophical troubles that he had been having and rejects the Manichean teachings.
