How to close a spring ApplicationContext?

You need to register a shutdown hook with the JVM as shown below:

((AbstractApplicationContext)appCtx).registerShutdownHook();

For more information see: Spring Manual: 3.6.1.6 Shutting down the Spring IoC container gracefully in non-web applications

If Java SE 7 and later, don't close, use try-with-resources which ensures that each resource is closed at the end of the statement.

try(final AbstractApplicationContext applicationContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[]{"classpath*:META-INF/spring/*.xml" }))
{
     //write your code
}

If you initialise context like one below

ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(beansXML); 

clean context like these

((ClassPathXmlApplicationContext) context).close();

Downcast your ApplicationContext to ConfigurableApplicationContext which defines close() method:

((ConfigurableApplicationContext)appCtx).close();