Today we’re continuing our look at Franciscan spirituality.  
Last time, we spoke about how the ascetical part of the spiritual life and the mystical part are really intertwined.  
Conceptually, they can at least easily be distinguished. In practice, it's not always easy to distinguish or separate them because both phases, both the ascetical and the mystical, always involve the collaboration of God's grace and our human will. It does remind us of the Incarnation when God became man in that sense.  The Incarnation was a work that was fully divine and fully human at the same time.  Franciscan spirituality, because it's Christocentric, can only conceive of the interior life and union with God in this way.  
Franciscan spirituality does accent more the work of God's grace because precisely it's that that makes the Divine Person of Jesus Christ. Franciscan spirituality makes Jesus' Divine Person the center of our spiritual life. So ours is not just a merely purely human-centered spiritual perspective, and in fact, this conception is essentially Christian and actually only Christian.  
The ascetical effort, the denying of yourself, wasn't unknown to the best proponents of paganism. The idea that you have to know yourself, correct your defects, acquire virtue, reach a level of interior resignation in front of the problems of life, and then even practice mortifications.  Well, many ancient and even modern pagan sages know this.  
What are they lacking?  Well, they're lacking supernatural charity. They're lacking divine grace, essentially.  
Non-Christians can be strong, prudent, just, temperate, but it's a strength, a prudence, a justice, and a temperance that's purely human and natural.  It's a good thing, but it's not what we were created for. We were created for so much more than just being virtuous on a natural level.  
What distinguishes Christian virtues from natural virtues is that Christian virtues aren't simply the product of our own doing based on human psychology and effort, but firstly, Christian virtues are the flowering of divine grace in us, which Jesus, our Head, communicates to us through the fruit of our union with Christ by means of grace/charity, because for Franciscans, grace and charity are the same.  
Only those who remain in His love, as Jesus says in John 15:9, can bring forth this abundant fruit.  For the Christian, there's not just a psychology of the virtues, as good and helpful as psychological insight is, but the Christian is also a theology of the virtues.  
Franciscan spirituality doesn't ignore the former, but it places more emphasis on the latter, on the theological virtues.  
And it does so, again, right from the beginning of the spiritual life, and it does this because grace isn't something that one simply adds to human effort at a certain point when our efforts have gone as far as they can go.  
No, grace is a divine gift that awakens and sustains our efforts from the beginning and transforms our efforts into supernatural actions.  
By means of the development of divine grace, following its impulses, seconding its movements, the Franciscan soul seeks union with God, and we call it a mystical union because mystical is everything that we do by means of the mysterious force of grace, in virtue of our vital union with Christ as members of His Mystical Body.  Remember, again, Jesus' words, where He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who remains or abides in Me and I in Him will bear much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing, John 15:5.  Apart from Jesus, all of our virtues fall short. Only His grace makes them spiritually fruitful.  
So let's ask Our Lady for the grace to not only be virtuous, but let's also ask Her for the grace to make our intentions and our actions ever more supernatural, ever more a pleasing offering to the Lord.  
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.