title: How to add a hook to the application context initialization event?
body: <p>For a regular Servlet, I guess you could declare a <a href="http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/5/api/javax/servlet/ServletContextListener.html">context listener</a>, but for Spring MVC would Spring make this any easier?</p>
  
  <p>Furthermore, if I define a context listener and then would need to access the beans defined in my <code>servlet.xml</code> or <code>applicationContext.xml</code>, how would I get access to them?</p>