Some years ago I quoted a historian as having said, "All power corrupts". I was challenged. The challenge was correct! The quotation should have been, "All power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today's first reading describes the bloody end to Ataliah's reign. Ataliah seems to have possesed something very close to absolute power and she was corrupted by it. Her death recalls the fate of another Old Testament tyrant, Jezebel.

As we look, perhaps with feelings of disbelief, at rulers clinging to power we remember Ataliah and Jezebel and sadly agree with Ecclesiastes, "Nothing is new under the sun" (1:9). We ask ourselves how men and women can convince themselves that they are still essential to their people's well being after thirty or forty years in power and being well into their eighties.

Limited, carefully circumscribed power and authority can, and indeed must be granted even to individual members of our prone to evil human race. It is abundantly clear that absolute, uncontrolled power cannot be granted to any human being.

An extraordinary but true reflection, however, is that all of us have some power over others, be it only psychological. Even it be so, let us treat others with respect and without any pride, over confidence or arrogance.