Volunteering at the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul is a way for Steve Hawkins to fulfill both his baptismal call and his service in the Knights of Malta, a 900-year-old lay religious order that is active in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Hawkins explained, “As a member of the Order of Malta (actually the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta), I have professed a lifelong commitment ‘. . . to serve the poor and the sick,’ in part because it is what Christ did and what he asks us to do, and in part because in serving ‘Our Lord’s poor and sick,’ I find incredible joy and fulfillment.”
The majority of the men who volunteer to work the overnight shift at the Dorothy Day overflow are not members of the knights, Hawkins said.
The Order of Malta only has 3,000 members in all of America and only 13,000 worldwide, but provides the world’s third largest relief services (behind Red Cross and Red Crescent).
