“What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.
Jesus asks, ‘Do you love me?’ We ask, ‘Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your kingdom?” (Matthew 20:21)
We have been tempted to replace love with power. Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross.
The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over lover, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints.”
Henri Nouwen IN THE NAME OF JESUS