Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we're going to continue looking at Franciscan spirituality. We've spoken of grace and of the infused virtues as elements of the mystical life. Today we'll just look at other aspects which are essential, namely the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes, a word on them.
From the root of God's grace in our soul, the gifts of the Holy Spirit flower. At baptism, the gifts are also infused into our soul with grace, and their task is to illuminate the soul, strengthen it, and facilitate its union with God. The gifts are always operating in us when we're in a state of grace, but their work is quiet and more subdued at first. They accompany the virtues in order to progressively transform our human actions into divine actions.
St. Bonaventure explains that at the beginning of the spiritual life, when the ascetical effort is prevalent, the Holy Spirit's gifts have, in particular, a power of resistance. So they strengthen the soul for its fight against evil, and they also empower it with a readiness, a promptness that renders it agile and quick in doing good. This double-edged power of resistance and readiness gradually prepares the soul for a greater union with God. As that union is slowly realized, the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit becomes stronger, more manifest, truly dominant, until their richness unfolds or spreads out in all their profundity and extension—i.e., when the unitive or mystical life fully flowers in the soul.
Grace also branches out into the Beatitudes, which our Lord shared with us in the Sermon on the Mount—the Beatitudes by which the soul reaches the heights of evangelical perfection: poverty of spirit, meekness, zeal for justice, mercy, purity of heart in suffering, and in persecution, sustained by God and in peace, too. The Beatitudes are really the result of God's grace and His gifts perfecting us.
So if we look back on those essential elements of the mystical life, we know that our spiritual life, again, begins with God's grace, and then by means of the infused virtues, our soul and its powers become elevated and rectified or corrected. Plus, by means of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, our soul is made agile and quick to do what's good, and by means of the Beatitudes, it is brought to perfection. In the full flowering of the life of grace, the fruits of the Holy Spirit mature as well—those fruits which are love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). The Church adds to that modesty, generosity, and chastity.
We can also say that the senses of our spirit develop as well. Just like our bodily senses help us to perceive exterior physical things, so too the senses of the spirit help us to find and perceive God everywhere, essentially. They're connected with the theological virtues, and you could say that they're the most perfect actions of those theological virtues. St. Bonaventure says that they aren't new habits but rather they express the state and the perfect exercise of the previous habits, meaning the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
The intimate operations of divine grace in the soul and the practice of the theological virtues, when it's intense and constant, are manifested in a spiritual sensibility by which not only do we believe in God, hope in Him, and love Him, but we also have a sense of God, meaning that we see and find Him everywhere. Everywhere we perceive His teachings, understand His desires, and taste of His goodness and His sweetness. Above all, it's in intimate, recollected prayer that the soul relaxes and unfolds itself before the Lord like a field of flowers before the rays of the sun. It's here that the soul really experiences God.
Faith in the Word Incarnate and adhering to Him in charity restore in the soul the inner sensitivity that sin had destroyed or dulled in our soul. St. Bonaventure, in his Itinerary, writes this: he says the soul first of all believes and hopes in Jesus Christ and loves Him, the Word Incarnate, uncreated, inspired, who is the way, the truth, and the life. When the soul believes in Christ as the uncreated Word and resplendence of the Father, it recovers the spiritual senses of hearing and sight—hearing in order to listen to the teachings of Christ, and sight in order to behold the splendor of His light. When through hope it longs to breathe in the inspired Word, by this aspiration and affection it recovers spiritual olfaction, he says. When through charity it embraces the Incarnate Word by receiving delight from Him and passing into Him in ecstatic love, it recovers the spiritual taste and touch, says St. Bonaventure in his Itinerary.
So there is, then, in the soul from the moment of its baptismal grace, all the supernatural organism that renders it capable of the mystical life—or rather, you could say that with baptism, the mystical life has already begun in seed form. From this beginning, the soul can arrive at the most complete flowering, the greatest spiritual perfection. The point of departure of that development will be the moment when we become aware of the existence of spiritual realities and spiritual richness inside of us. 
From that moment, we can begin to foster our spiritual growth with our free and voluntary correspondence. The presence of the supernatural will gradually become a psychological conquest that the soul will make—adhering to the work of God inside of it, collaborating, removing obstacles, slowly climbing step by step the difficult but continually more luminous climb that leads to perfection, meaning to full union with God in the identification with Christ.
So may Our Lady continue to assist us in that climb, and may we continue to persevere in growing spiritually, even when things are quite difficult.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.