Who devour widows' houses, and for a show make long prayers: the same shall receive greater condemnation.
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George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
These shall receive a greater condemnation, because they not only commit ordinary evil actions, but also make their prayers, and virtue itself, a cloak to their hypocrisy and vanity, and the cause of their greater depravity, famishing the widows whom themselves ought to compassionate and relieve. (Theophylactus)
Or, the greater honours and rewards they received for their wickedness, the greater punishment must they endure to expiate it. (Ven. Bede)
Jesus Christ seems in this place to allude to the avaricious practice of the Jews, draining the purses of widows by their stipulated long prayers for their departed husbands, (see Matthew xxiii. 14.; Mark xii. 40.) and thus abusing so holy a thing as prayer, merely to gratify their avarice.
