Who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: these shall receive greater condemnation.
All Commentaries on Mark 12:40 Go To Mark 12
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Who devour, Gr. οί κατεσθίοντες, i.e, who altogether consume and lick up the houses of widows, both by reason of the sumptuous feasts which they ask of them, as well as by the gifts and money which they avariciously extort from them under the pretext of offering prayers for them. "When, therefore," says Bede, "the hand is stretched out to the poor, it is wont to help prayer; but those men passed whole nights in prayer that they might take from the poor."
These shall receive greater judgment. A severer sentence of God, and a heavier condemnation shall press upon the Scribes in the day of judgment, because by a pretence of probity they are aiming at wrong-doing; and being clothed in the garments of God, they are fighting on the devil"s side. "Simulated holiness," says S. Chrysostom, "is a double iniquity."
