Yeah, I like the expression "wrapped up" or "completed" or "all used up", the root word in there being related to our "summit", meaning peak, or apex, a point beyond which you can't go anymore, where it's finished, or, as I said, "all wrapped up".
So, then the "saeculum" refers to an era, an epoch of time ... not so much "the world". It's used loosely to mean the world in the sense of meaning THIS world, the one on THIS side of eternity. That's why many Latin prayers end with in saecula saeculorum, which is a poetic expression for eternity, meaning unto epoches of epochs, and not world of worlds. That's likely a carryover from Hebrew idiom, since they ofted used plurals that way, such as in the expressions like "Holy of Holies", something known as the "superlative genitive", where it's a way to say that it's Holier than Holy, Beyond Holy, aka the Holiest possible and beyond. Thus "ages of ages" means essentially BEYOND all ages, meaning beyond time, or in eternity. So that is how sometimes "saeculum" can be rendered loosely as the world, since it means that creation which exists "this side of eternity", but it really is a time concept, not a place concept.
In any case, if you speak of a consummation of the world (speaking of the created world), yes, then you could read some noton of non-finality, where it wouldn't be a hard-fast termination line. But once you realize that it's consummation of time (effectively), i.e. when time has been all used up, completely spent, and there's none left ... "end of time" is in fact a single discrete point in time, and not just some "phase".
Topic: Vatican Council says there will be shepherds "usque ad consummationem saeculi" (Read 60334 times)