Cannot get Spring application context bean

I am trying to get application context like so in my code:

ApplicationContext ctx = ApplicationContextProvider.getApplicationContext();

But it's always null. What am I missing? I have implemented ApplicationContextAware interface and declared it as a bean in my spring-beans.xml.

public class ApplicationContextProvider implements ApplicationContextAware {
        ApplicationContext ctx;

        @Override
    public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext ctx) throws BeansException {
        this.ctx = ctx;
    }

    public static ApplicationContext getApplicationContext(){
        return ctx;
    }
} 


<beans xmlns="http://ift.tt/GArMu6"
    xmlns:p="http://ift.tt/1jdM0fE" xmlns:xsi="http://ift.tt/ra1lAU"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://ift.tt/GArMu6 http://ift.tt/1jdM0fG">

    <import resource="classpath*:/META-INF/spring/batch/override/*.xml" />
    <import resource="classpath*:/META-INF/spring/batch/jobs/*.xml" />

    <bean id="appContextProvider" class="com.util.ApplicationContextProvider"/>

</beans>