Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we're going to continue looking at Franciscan spirituality and the goal of our spiritual life, and we'll talk about how it's really a goal that everyone is invited to reach.
When speaking of grace, St. Bonaventure says that it has as its essential prerogative to look to please God and to adhere to Him. The presence of grace in our souls, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit all give the soul what we would call a mystical orientation from the moment of our justification. Grace orients or turns us towards God and acts like a magnet that helps attract and draw us to Him.
It's true that the word mystical has its fullest meaning when attributed to the spiritual life in the full flowering of the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But it's also true that the spiritual life is substantially mystical in whatever virtuous and apostolic activity there is—activities which are carried out in the light and under the dominion of grace in supernatural charity. 
With this in mind, it's easy to understand how even people immersed in the active life can be living a mystical life at the same time, even as they're engaged in the most ordinary activities in their state of life. To use a phrase, you can call it a "mysticism of action," which everyone can arrive at and to which everyone is really called. The 2,000-year history of the Church actually proves that fact.
And if it’s true that there are few people who arrive at mystical union, in reality, there are many hidden souls we don't know who probably arrive at it, even without knowing it themselves. But if there really are few who arrive there, it's because there are few people who aspire to perfection and sanctity. One of the greatest problems in the spiritual life is not that we ask and expect too much from God; one of the greatest problems is that we ask for and expect too little. We aim low instead of aiming high, and that's not how the Lord wants us to live. 
Many of us prefer to remain in spiritual mediocrity—a mediocrity which cuts the wings off of the most beautiful aspirations of the soul and which makes the treasure of God's grace turn into gifts given in vain. It's quite sad, actually, when that happens.
The Franciscan concept of the mystical life excludes the opinion of some authors who say that the mystical is an exceptional path open only to a few privileged souls. In that perspective, there are two parallel paths: there's the ordinary ascetical path for average souls and the other, mystical and extraordinary path for privileged souls. Placing itself on experience, Franciscan spirituality defends and sustains the call to the mystical life to all souls, even to the people listening to the homily today—even to the one preaching the homily as well. 
The mystical life is the normal and ordinary goal of the spiritual life. Everyone's called to holiness and perfection. Jesus says, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). As the Apostle says in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, "This is the will of God, your sanctification." So in God's plan, two separate species of sanctity don't exist. There's only one way to sanctify yourself, and that's to unite yourself to Jesus Christ according to the inspiration of grace and to conform yourself to Him according to the measure that He Himself has fixed in His eternal designs for your soul.
So again, everyone's called to mystical union if for no other reason than simply because you can't arrive at sanctity without reaching a union of life with God in the mystery of grace. So, grace, sanctity, and union with God are inseparable. By our very concrete nature, which aspires to the possession of the good, we are destined for mystical union with God. We're destined for the highest spiritual heights. 
And by God's most admirable, wise, and providential design, God's ineffable divine grace and gifts correspond to our insatiable aspirations. Actually, God has placed those aspirations in us so that we would be open to receiving His gifts. And since this is true for every person, the mystical impulse becomes not only a call but even becomes a duty for everyone.
Remember, the call to follow Jesus when He says, "Follow me" in the Gospels—it doesn't just mean walk behind Me. It means imitate Me; it means to become like Him. Follow Me means become like Me. Follow Me means become like Me. To be a follower of Christ means that you are striving to become like Christ. 
So the mystical union with God is a legitimate desire for us to have and to aspire to, because that's God's desire for us. God's not jealous or selfish. He doesn't keep His sanctity, and His goodness, and His glory all to Himself. No, He shares, and wants to share it with us, His children. 
If we follow that desire and search for God with all our heart, then boundless horizons open up before the soul. And again, no one can rightly say, "Well, all that's not for me. All that holiness and happiness stuff is for someone else, just not for me." It's not true at all. Not true at all. 
The more humble and the more trustful the attitude of the soul is in front of these vast spiritual horizons, the more it entrusts itself to God in its littleness, and entrusts itself to divine grace without questioning how far God wants to take her—but committing all her strength to follow the inspirations of grace, quick to get up after every fall, and resolved to always move forward. The more we do all that, the more God will do with us and in us, and the more we'll truly become a blessing to others as well, too—as, for example, Saint Pius, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, was to us and to all of his spiritual children.
So let's fix our gaze on Jesus, the initiator and accomplisher of every good work, who with us and in us fights for this supreme conquest. And let's ask Our Lady for the grace to embrace the mystical call to love, and glory, and goodness that God has on our soul. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.