Photo Caption: Johnnette Benkovic opened and closed her keynote talks at the Conference for the Widowed and Divorced with prayer.

By: By Jennifer Willems

There is no escaping the cross and that’s OK by Johnnette Benkovic.

“Whatever our circumstance is in life, whatever cross God entrusts to us, God wants to use it for our good,” the Florida-based lay evangelist told the men and women who attended the Diocesan Conference for the Widowed and Divorced last Saturday at the Spalding Pastoral Center in Peoria.

“The cross has no capacity to bring evil. The cross — suffering in union with Christ — is always, always, always redemptive because salvation comes through the cross,” said Benkovic, who is the founder and president of a Catholic evangelization apostolate called Living His Life Abundantly International. She is also the host of EWTN’s “The Abundant Life” and “Women of Grace.”

In addition to her keynote talks for those who are widowed and those who are divorced, the conference included workshops on grieving, annulments, running a support group, handling financial issues, prayer and coping skills for parents and children. Father Donald Roszkowski, pastor of St. Mary’s in Metamora and St. Elizabeth’s in Washburn, also culled lessons from the life and writings of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Servant of God.

At the end of the conference, participants were warmly welcomed at the regular 4 p.m. Mass at nearby St. Mary’s Cathedral. Msgr. Stanley Deptula, director of the diocesan Office of Divine Worship and executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation, stood in as celebrant for Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, who was in Atlanta for the annual spring session of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In a letter that was included in the conference program, Bishop Jenky assured them of his prayers that the gathering would be one of “both healing and spiritual nourishment. May you find consolation and hope in your grief.”

The second of its kind, the conference was sponsored by the Widowed and Divorced Diocesan Advisory Board and the Office of Family Life.

ENCOURAGES HOPE
Benkovic knows what it’s like to be in the depths of sorrow and grief over the death of a loved one. She lost her son, Simon, who had survived a six-month tour of duty in Iraq, in a single vehicle accident on March 20, 2004.

Fifty-one weeks to the day after Simon’s death, her husband, Anthony, had a grand mal seizure that led to the discovery of an aggressive brain tumor. He slipped into a coma on Easter Sunday in 2007 and died three days later.

Simon’s death floored her, literally, and it was only by embracing faith as an intellectual virtue and then putting it into practice as a theological virtue that she was able to receive the grace she had prayed for and then accompany Anthony on his journey home to God.

“Only God can work good out of death. Only God can work life out of death — eternal life for your spouse, but life for you and life for me in this moment,” Benkovic said in her remarks to the widowed persons at the conference.

“He’s got something for you in this,” she assured them. “It’s hard to understand when you’re suffering and it doesn’t mean you don’t grieve. I cry for my son every day. I cry for Anthony . . . but I never doubt that God is bringing life to me out of this loss.”

Benkovic encouraged them to HOPE: hold on to the truths of the faith found in sacred Scripture, own the challenge, persevere in patience and prayer, and expect God to intervene.

“God has a perfect plan for you. Pray to ask him to show you what that plan might be,” she said. “The cross is replete with grace.”

“MINE THE TREASURE”
Benkovic was married for almost 34 years when Anthony died and some of those years were very difficult, she shared with the divorced persons at the conference. They had been away from the Catholic Church and returned in different ways at different times, which brought up issues in their relationship.

Through Marriage Encounter, prayer and a determination to love each other they saved their marriage, but she admitted there was a lot of pain involved.

“You cannot look at your situation and think you come out of that without wounds,” Benkovic said. “I’m still working on some of the wounds I suffered in those three years all these years later. God in his goodness and in his mercy wants to bring all of those out into his light so he can heal them.”

She told them the cross entrusted to each of us is where we find wisdom and begin to experience the profound mysteries of life in a way that might not be possible without it. Rather than running from the cross, she encouraged them to mine the treasure of the cross they had been given.

“You have to look for the grace . . . to see God in the midst of all of it,” Benkovic said. “There’s grace in there. God wants to show something in there. Let him take you back into the pain and suffering to see the grace in it.”

Then let the grace move through you, she said.