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I can't say I understand your opus in totality, but it appears you are not refuting my point that the Catholic view is that suffering in Purgatory is indeed necessary. If that is the case, a prayer to reduce the suffering would not make sense.

BTW, I do prescribe pain killers for my patients undergoing PT. A comfortable patient is best able to cooperate and achieve therapy goals.

I'm saying inevitable, inextricably bound up with the work at hand, purification and the acquisition of virtue and all that, but it's not the thing itself, not exactly of the essence, sort of like chewing is necessary (normally) for eating. We don't go to dinner just to chew, but we know there's going to be a lot of chewing going on. We don't go to Purgatory to suffer but to be purged (etc.), which generally involves suffering.

You gotta read the Purgatorio (largely because it's the work that made me fall in love with Dante.)

I'm wanting to pray for the speedy and as easy as possible accomplishment of purgation, how's that?

Anyway I still stand by my distinction between useful and useless or less useful suffering. In any event I'm trying to get away from the notion of quanta of pain as recompense for quanta of sin.

I wish you were MY doctor. I didn't get no pain killers, unless you count ibuprofen.

If that is the case, a prayer to reduce the suffering would not make sense.

It is actually a prayer that God in His mercy foreshorten the need for the suffering. At this hour, language fails me, so I will badly oversimplify it as a request that a judge reduce sentencing, or that the teacher let the student out of detention early.