Carlos Mesters offers insights into, and argues for, a new way of reading the Bible that has emerged from his experience of Brazilian base communi- ties. When discussing a biblical text, the base communities discuss their own situation, without making distinctions on the level of methodology or content.

In this attitude of interpretation, three elements stand out. First, the peo- ple treat the Bible with freedom. They are liberated from the prison of the letter through lived experience. Second, they read the Bible with familiarity- not the familiarity of a people who know the Bible from beginning to end but that of a people who feel at home in the Bible.

Third, the people's main interest is not in interpreting the Bible's historico- literal meaning but in interpreting life through the Bible. They are faithful to the meaning they discover contextually in the Bible for their own lives. This way of reading the Bible offers a framework within which it is possible to rediscover what the ministry of the Word needs to be in the Church today