Admonition II: The evil of self-will
In his second Admonition Francis speaks about the evil of self-will. By self-will Francis means disobedience. When God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they disobeyed God and ate the fruit. They listened to what they wanted and not to what God wanted. Francis expresses this most vividly when he says: 'And so, through the suggestion of the devil and the transgression of the command, it became the apple of the knowledge of evil'. It is pointless to recognize Jesus in the sacraments, in the Church and in creation if we do not listen to what Jesus is saying to us. At times this is a challenge because many conflicting voices tell us how to live, what is right, what is allowed and so on. Francis believed that Jesus was telling him to start a new way of life based only on the Gospel. Many bishops and many of his companions tried to persuade him to accept the form of religious life as worked out by earlier monks such as Saint Benedict and Saint Bernard. But for Francis to do this would have been to go against what he believed the Lord was telling him to do. Had Francis done what they wanted he would have felt that he was eating the apple of self-will. So in this Admonition Francis asks us to listen to our conscience and not put the suggestions of other people before the voice of our conscience. To follow our conscience is to refuse to eat the apple of self-will. Francis says: 'For they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good who make their will their own and, in this way, exalt themselves over the good things the Lord says or does in them'.
