THE artist Helen Meyer (born 1929) trained at Camberwell and Edinburgh Colleges of Art. She paints and works in clay, although her favourite medium over the years has been wood, in which she carves beautiful figures, usually with a strong feminine element. She has done a fair number of works on religious themes, including a carving, Christ and the Beloved Disciple, which captures the intimacy and poignancy of John's resting his head on Jesus at the Last Supper.

When I was Vicar of All Saints', Fulham, in the 1970s, she did a set of Stations of the Cross for the church, about which we made a TV programme together. She had not studied the Stations before, and came to the subject with a freshness that is reflected in the work. Some of the Stations came easily; others were more difficult artistically; while the whole set, because of the subject-matter, she found painful to execute.

The Stations of the Cross originated with the Franciscans as a devotion in the 13th century in Jerusalem. It was adopted by Roman Catholic countries in the 18th century, and has made its way into a good number of Anglican churches.

Probably the best-known set of Stations in the 20th century were those done by Eric Gill for Westminster Cathedral, but I believe the finest are those by Norman Adams for the little church of St Mary's, Mulberry Street, in Manchester. These bring out, more than any other, the sheer anguish of Christ in his suffering.

In contrast to those by Adams, the dominant mood of those done by Meyer is sadness, pity, and pathos. She says that when she painted the crucifixion scene, the words of Simeon to Mary kept coming to mind: "A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also" (Luke 2.35).

Her brother was killed in France with a Highland regiment in 1944, when he was 22 and she was 14. The sense of loss has remained with her, and surfaced as she was painting this scene in particular. The tenderness and pity so present there imbue the whole set of Stations, not least this one of Jesus's falling.

The strong colours of Jesus Falls for the Third Time draw the viewer into the scene, and create a definite mood. The dark wood of the cross, the black of the mountains, and the following shadow of the cross stretched across grass set the tone.

This is made even more sombre by the purple of Christ's robe. Purple is the colour of Lent, and of mourning. Particularly striking is the red that fills the whole sky: it is the red of a dramatic sunset, but here it is not a scene of earthly beauty, but of the sun's going down into the world's night. It is a violent, almost volcanic red, indicating some mystery beyond our understanding.

In contrast to the strength and power of these colours, there is the delicate figure of Jesus himself, his pale face against the mountains imbued with a sense of pathos. There are several remarkable features about this depiction of Jesus.

First of all, he is clearly kneeling. In all other examples of this scene, Jesus is shown crushed and burdened: crushed by the sheer weight of the cross, and burdened by the weight of the world's sin which it signifies. Here, by sharp contrast, he is shown with his knees on the ground, slightly bent over, his heels upturned at the back, in a posture of prayer.

Second, the white, unshod, upturned feet speak of sheer vulnerability. They are open to the roughness of the world, exposed to every blow.

Then there is the way in which the hands are holding the cross. The natural way in which someone would hold the cross in such a situation is either loosely from sheer exhaustion, or tightly, to ease the pain. Here, the hands hold the cross delicately, as if it were a musical instrument - carefully, lovingly.

It is as if Jesus is about to play the music of his vocation: not burdened and imposed upon, but taken up into himself. This is an image taken by R. S. Thomas in one of his finest poems, "The Musician", in which the poet, hearing Kreisler playing, thinks of Christ on the cross: "Making such music as lives still . . . it was himself that he played."
 

The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is the former Bishop of Oxford, and the author of The Image of Christ in Modern Art (Ashgate, £19.99 (CT Bookshop £18); 978-1-4094-6382-5) (Books,20 December). This Lent series is based on the book.