I have been keeping vigil with my classmate Bishop Anthony Milone.

As Bishop of Great Falls, MT, Bishop Anthony was shepherd to a vast area
including Indian reservations where he was welcomed and honored.

The Native Americans have a beautiful spiritual saying about walking a Blessing Path:

Walk this path with honor and dignity.
Find joy in your journey.
And be a blessing to all you encounter.

That was Bishop Anthony’s path.

Going all the way back to his school days when he walked the path
to Christ Child Center to learn his catechism.

And on that path, he, the baby of his large family, was accompanied and shepherded
by his wonderful brothers and sisters who banded together to help him and their mother
after the premature death of his father.

From his earliest days he learned shepherding from the example of his widowed mother
and his older siblings. As the song proclaims,
“Like a shepherd he leads his flock, and holds the lambs in his arms . . .”

He was the youngest lamb in the family and they held him like a lamb in their arms.

And in his final days on his Blessing Path,
that family’s descendants have banded together
to shepherd their beloved uncle on his last journey.

His Blessing Path, provided by his older siblings, took him - in 1946 -
to Creighton Prep where he became my classmate.

Recently in his room, I noticed many valued pictures including Anthony with the Pope.
But also among his treasures was a picture of him on the Prep freshman football team,
Anthony beaming a proud smile, a little guy among giants.

I have a memory of me, a scrawny kid, being pushed around by a much bigger kid
and Anthony intervening on my behalf.
He was a compassionate peacemaker then and always.

In my last visit with him we recalled those Prep days.

He smiled and remembered being chosen to write a column for the
"Junior Jay" newspaper titled “Strictly Milone.”
He smiled and said “probably should have been called "Strictly Baloney!”

In 1950, his brother, Carl, drove Anthony and me to Conception, MO,
where we began our college years.

In the old college dorm - which was a converted POW barracks left over from World War 2 -
we named the hallway "Milone’s Alley" because when most of us had to labor
long and hard over the books, he was so smart that he was a quick start
and required a very short study time.
After that he would be free to roam the halls and socialize.

His senior year at Prep, he took the Police Commissioner’s daughter to the Prom.
That stood us well in college, for in our summers, that same Police Commissioner
gave us jobs at the police testing station where we walked back and forth
testing automobiles, interacting with the public, and learning to be servants to the public.
That too was a Blessing Path.

You know the rest of his story . . .

Before I left him on his deathbed, I told him that I loved him and always looked up to him
as a role model, as a person, as a priest, and as a bishop.
And with good reasons, for all his life he walked a Blessing Path
and fulfilled the Native American adage:

Walk this path with honor and dignity.
Find joy in your journey.
And be a blessing to all you encounter.