Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today, as we continue to look at Franciscan spirituality, we'll explore what the term mystic or mystical means, or the concept of the mystical life. What does that actually mean?
Well, first of all, when we talk about the mystical life, it's best to exclude things like raptures, ecstasies, special revelations, and other things like that. Pretty much all spiritual theology and all spiritual theology writers consider those extraordinary phenomena, and they're facts which are accessory, so they're secondary things—things that don't constitute the essence of the mystical life.
Those who write books on spiritual theology delineate the characteristics and fix the limits of the ascetical and mystical lives, assigning to the ascetical life spiritual exercises, human effort (obviously accompanied by grace), the fight against disordered passions, and the acquirement of virtue. To the mystical life, they assign the phenomena and the manifestations of union with God under the prevailing dominion of grace, and these manifestations are seen particularly in what's called “infused contemplation”.
The beginning of infused contemplation, say the authors, would signal the passage from the ascetical to the mystical, and the mystical group in this case would be pretty much a restricted group of people, accessible only to a handful of extraordinary souls. So in the ascetical life, human activity is prevalent; in the mystical life, the work of grace is prevalent, and the soul is more passive in front of it. 
To use a Gospel illustration, the ascetical soul is more like Martha, the mystical soul more like Mary. It's easy to understand that such a distinction is based above all on a psychological factor—in this case, meaning the behavior of the soul before God's grace—but this perspective doesn't take into account enough that ontological, substantial factor, which is God's grace, that is common to both the ascetical and the mystical life since God's grace is present in the soul from the very beginning of the supernatural life. Without God's grace, there really is no spiritual life for us.
If we go back and look in hindsight at the journey of a soul, we'll find that, yes, at the beginning, there's God's grace. God is also the first one to act, too. The impulse of His grace comes first, and it stirs up the soul and renders its movement to God efficacious. God takes the initiative in our relationship with Him and in our spiritual life; it's never vice versa—I'm not the one who begins it, He does.
If we keep that in mind, then the distinction between the ascetical and mystical as two successive periods of the spiritual life can't be a substantial distinction because it doesn't regard the essence of the mystical, which is the active presence of grace. If anything, it's a psychological distinction, meaning it only regards the way a soul acts in grace. And more than that, a clear distinction, even if it's just psychological, really isn't possible.
Already at the beginning of your spiritual journey, there's a correspondence of your soul to the action of grace. When a person begins to act supernaturally, to move towards God, they also begin to allow themselves to be moved by grace. When a person busies themselves in the fight against their passions, their effort wouldn't be worth anything if it wasn't guided and sustained by God's grace. But our correspondence to and docility to God's grace becomes always prompter and more conscious as we go forward until our interior life is totally conformed to Christ.
And remember, it is a slow and gradual process. Rome wasn't built in a day; you're not made a saint in a day either. We like to say that holiness is about as exciting as watching a tree grow a lot of times, right? It's a slow, gradual thing—doesn't look like much is happening each day. But if the tree continues to get sunlight and water and be rooted in decent soil, it will grow. It's the same with us spiritually. If we continue to try to be faithful to the Lord's commandments, to receive the sacraments worthily, to pray, to do good works—through God's grace, we grow day by day, even though it may not seem like that to us.
So the interior life, because it is life, can't easily be divided into separate parts which mechanically follow one after the other. Rather, one can analyze the aspects of this life—aspects which coexist from its beginning to the highest spiritual heights, changing proportions all the way through, with a prevalence of human activity at the beginning (that's the primarily ascetical part), from that to a prevalence of divine activity in the more advanced parts (i.e., the mystical part). That's at least how Franciscans tend to view the spiritual life classically. I hope that makes sense to someone.
Let's ask Our Lady for the grace to continue to grow patiently each day, through the light of God's grace, to grow more and more like Her Son.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.