It was April, 2003. My head was usually full of case studies and spreadsheets back then—the frantic, sleepless rhythm of an MBA student—but Sunday mornings were for Dravlje.

The Church of Christ’s Incarnation isn’t your typical Slovenian church. It doesn’t have the baroque shadows or the damp smell of ancient stone. It is postmodern, organic; the nave fans out in a semi-circle, designed to pull the congregation toward the sanctuary rather than distance them from it. On this particular morning, the spring light was filtering in, washing over the sloping roof and the white walls.

I sat on the right side, about halfway back. It was a vantage point that offered a clear view of the altar and the curve of the pews ahead.

The mass followed its ancient, predictable rhythm. We stood, we sat, we knelt. The air was thick with the murmur of prayer and the scent of incense. We reached the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The church grew still. The priest moved to the center of the altar, preparing the gifts. This is the apex of the service, the moment of transubstantiation.

The priest raised the consecrated wafer. The bells rang—a sharp, crystalline sound in the silence. All eyes were fixed on the white circle held aloft in his hands.

Movement broke the tableau.

From the very first row, a man stood up. He didn’t rush, but he moved with a terrifying, stiff purpose. I recognized him vaguely—a local figure I’d seen wandering the parish before, a man from one of the few remaining working farms in Dravlje. I learned later that he was known to struggle with his mental health, but he had always been a passive ghost in the background.

Not today.

As he stepped onto the marble of the sanctuary, I saw the glint. A kitchen knife, long and broad, gripped tight in his hand.

The oxygen seemed to leave the room. The priest was still holding the host, his chest exposed, his eyes raised to heaven, unaware of the figure closing the distance. The man lunged. He swung the knife in a vicious, underhand arc, aiming straight for the priest’s stomach.

The sound was wrong. It wasn’t the wet thud of steel entering flesh; it was a hard, metallic clack.

The knife clattered to the marble floor. The priest doubled over, clutching his abdomen, the wafer likely still in his hand or on the corporal.

Pandemonium broke the silence.

“Hudič! Hudič je v njem!” (The Devil! The Devil is in him!)

The scream came from the older women—the tatas in headscarves—piercing the air. They were shrieking about Satan, their voices trembling with a primal, superstitious fear.

I stood up, paralyzed for a split second, as were most of us. But three or four men from the front rows were already moving. They tackled the attacker, pinning him to the cold stone steps. There was blood on the floor—bright red drops against the grey marble—and for a moment, we all thought the worst. We thought the shepherd had been slaughtered in front of his flock.

But then, the impossible happened. The priest sat on the altar steps for a moment, breathing hard, his face pale. Then, he stood up.

He checked his midsection. He wasn’t bleeding.

The attacker had struck with lethal force, but the blade had slammed directly into the heavy metal buckle of the belt holding up the priest’s trousers beneath his vestments. The steel had bounced off the brass. The blood on the floor wasn’t the priest’s; the force of the impact had caused the attacker’s hand to slide down the blade, cutting his own fingers.

As the police were called and the man was dragged away—still flanked by the cries of the older women praying against evil—a strange hush returned to the nave.

We waited for the mass to be cancelled. We expected an ambulance, a dismissal, an end to the morning.

Instead, the priest took a breath. He straightened his chasuble. He signaled for the altar servers to return to their places. Visibly shaken, but with a resolve that I still can’t quite fathom, he returned to the altar.

He finished the rite.

He spoke the words of peace, his voice trembling only slightly. We received communion, all of us moving in a daze, still holding our breath. The mundane mechanism of a trouser belt had saved a life, but the way he finished the mass felt like the greater miracle.

We walked out into the April sunshine of Ljubljana, blinking against the light, carrying the weight of a memory that would outlast any lesson I learned in business school.