World Without End: An Explanation

I chose this as a title for a number of reasons. First among them is that it is a line from a Catholic prayer that I get stuck in my head from time to time. The prayer is called The Glory Be nowadays, but it is sometimes referred to as the Doxology (from the Greek 'doxa' meaning 'belief', roughly + 'logos' meaning roughly 'the word' or 'the truth'). The prayer is said as follows:

Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit
As it was in the beginning
Is now and ever shall be
World without end

Amen.

It got me thinking as to what is this 'world without end'? Its always puzzled me, ever since I was a child. In the prayer, it refers to the eternity in which God resides as Trinity; the prayer thus functions as an affirmation of this reality. Yet in my way of thinking, it has another meaning for us.

Since I have been introduced to Heidegger's theories about contexts, or 'worlds', I have not ceased to be intrigued. He posited that, throughout the course of history, there have been a succession of contexts, or worlds. Each would succeeds another, and different possibilities are present in different worlds or ages (however you want to think about it). Some possibilities in one age are not possible in others. For example, one can't be a Victorian lady in this current age. You can dress like one, act like one, even identify as one, but you won't be a Victorian lady in the same way that Victorian ladies existed in the Victorian age, simply because the context has shifted, and the circumstances are different. Now, in some of his writings about technology (which I cannot in good faith claim to fully understand, this is just my crude interpretation) Heidegger posited that in the current age, predominated by technological thinking, we run the risk of not enabling the context to shift. This is because technology is not just artifact for Heidegger, but instead a way of knowing. Being is a kind of third party in his later philosophy and Being interacts with humans in such a way so as to shift contexts, or allow the next world to come to pass. Human beings must 'make a home for Being' in order for this to occur. Heidegger thought that our way of looking at the world now runs the risk of not allowing that to happen. Thus, the context may never shift again. That is, if we don't re-evaluate our way of thinking and prioritize reflection, among other things. It may even be the case that this has come to pass, & we are now living at the "End of History" a kind of "world without end".

It is still an open question, one that I think about frequently. Yet, I have still come to no conclusions. But the phrase, uttered by itself as a kind of prayer, can be a call to reflection, a call to interpretation. In an age where we ask so much to be spelled out for us, where we demand pre-packaged interpreations for our consumption, whether it be in the form of a self-help book, a TV commercial or a predicable movie, such a phrase invites us to explore a mystery. "What does it mean?" I ask myself & there is no one to tell me. So I must find out for myself.