A favorite professor once defined Catholic Social Tradition as “a way of transforming the world through costly commitments.” The Christian life is the moral life; the moral life is the committed life. As a member of the Francesco Collaborative, I am passionate about addressing questions of poverty, economics, labor, justice, and human development through a lens of Christian social ethics and moral theology. CST's core principles (human dignity, the preferential option for the poor, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, care for creation, and the dignity of work) form a social morality–a moral theology– that offers us a distinct framework for pursuing justice (and living justly) in the world. It informs our understanding of who we are and who we ought to be as human beings, and it deepens our moral imagination, calling us to imagine – and even re-imagine–a world defined by ideals like dignity and the common good. How can we best translate CST principles into specific times and circumstances? This question applies to the macro level (What would a just economy look like?) and extends to the smallest of places (How do we send our emails? How do we go home to our families?). In other words, what difference do our faith and moral commitments make “on the ground”?CST's language of encounter offers us a window into the good life and a world built on and for the dignity of each and every human person. It calls us to revere wisdom, to cultivate attitudes of interdependence and openness, and to courageously step into commitments. It asks that we define success, meaning, and worth by criteria that exist outside the marketplace. It calls us to notice that there really is no value-neutral space, and it invites us to be open to transformation, to metanoia. It is in the fluidity of moral commitment—in all times, moments, and places—that we become agents of justice in the world. If we seek the good life, if we allow ourselves to be transformed and shaped by moral conviction and commitment, our world can follow. It is this kind of world I want to live in, this kind of world I want to build.