Why does Tomcat take so long to start? how can I monitor status?

I have an application where Tomcat under Centos linux takes about 4 minutes to be "online" from the time it starts. i dont know what its doing but wonder if there is a way to ping something in the tomcat to check status?

How to read "time" from a Tomcat server?

HI Is there a command i can issue to get the exact system time that the remote Tomcat server is using? and then is there a command or some way (with applicable admin rights) to set the remote time? the idea is the sync'ing of the different PC's im hoping to use, if there is some other way used I