Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In our series on Franciscan spirituality, we've looked at the soul of every created and uncreated reality, which is love or charity. We spoke of the foundation of every interior construction, which is Jesus Christ. We talked about the end or the goal of it all, which is mystical union with God. Now we'll look at the means to reach this highest goal that God has for us.
The concreteness of love reveals itself in two phases. The first phase is inclination. The second phase is that of determination. The phase of inclination directs us toward the ideal, towards the goal, by means of an interior attraction. Saint Bonaventure says that when one chooses something, they love. And the end or the goal of love is God. The phase of determination makes us choose the means that are the quickest and most apt to help us reach the goal that we've seen and willed.
The most excellent means to love and union with God is through the most holy humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus's humanity is the way, the means, and the sacrament by which God comes to us and we go to Him. As scripture says, He's the universal mediator between God and men, 1 Timothy 2:5. And it's through Christ and with Christ that the true adorers of God worship the Father in spirit and truth, as Jesus Himself notes in John 4:23.
Franciscan spirituality accentuates and gives its own light to the formula, "through Christ our Lord," because it gives the centrality and universal mediation of Christ the widest possible affirmation. Jesus mediates for us not only all grace and glory, but He even mediates creation and life itself. In the life of the Spirit, we say that everything operates by incorporation into Jesus Christ in that life, from which, by an interior impulse, the life of the Spirit receives its vital increase and the initiative of every good work. So we arrive at our end, which is God, by the best means possible, which is Christ, going by the same ways that He Himself walked and lived, reliving His life in a way that simple creatures can actually do in our own capacity.
In fact, to be a branch in the vine that is Christ means to be assumed into the communion of life and of death and resurrection and of the works of Jesus. It means to receive from Him the fruitful impulse which urges us interiorly to conform ourselves to Him in life and in virtue. It means to be the fulfillment of His work in time, His manifestation throughout all the ages. From Christ living and operating in him, St. Francis, through a supernatural harmony, received the initiative and the impulse to choose those means that, in simplicity of spirit, would bring him to his goal, to mystical union with God. 
Those means are summed up into three categories: one, poverty; two, humility; three, suffering. All three have an ascetical weight of the highest value, which springs not from the normal, natural effort of the human will, but rather comes from the grace operating in us by means of Christ, to which the soul adheres with a docile collaboration. Christ operated and worked in St. Francis, and St. Francis operated and worked in Christ, and he bore the fruit of Christ for the Heavenly Father in his time. 
Jesus, in His mortal life, was on earth, He was poor, He was humble, and He suffered greatly. This is how St. Francis contemplated and understood Him, and this is how, with a passionate love, the sons of St. Francis also see Him. St. Angela of Foligno explicitly said that the companions of Jesus during His mortal life were those three: poverty, humility, and suffering. And Christ relived in St. Francis, by means of His grace, those three cherished gifts of poverty, humility, and suffering. 
These are three things that we tend to see as curses, but with the eyes of God, we can begin to see them as gifts. There's a double movement, which is the origin and which helps these virtues to flourish. First, there's the divine initiative, the flow of grace from Jesus, which flourishes in the branches and gives fruit. Then there's the irresistible attraction that, in St. Francis, in his love for Jesus, gave rise to seeing his beloved poor, humble, and suffering. With a movement of surprising simplicity, St. Francis established his riches in poverty, his dreams of glory in humility and littleness, and his joys in the love of the Cross of Jesus.
So in our next reflection, we'll begin to look more closely at each of these three means: poverty, humility, and suffering. Let's ask Our Lady for the grace to begin to see these three sanctifying sisters as gifts, more so than as curses. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.